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THE GREAT POLAR CURRENT 

9 



THE 
GREAT POLAR CURRENT 

POLAR PAPERS 

OLD AND NEW 
BY 

HENRY MELLEN PRENTISS 




CAMBRIDGE 

Printed at t&e Ktoerstoe Press 

1897 



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Copyright, 1897, 
By HENRY MELLEN PRENTISS. 

All rights reserved. f \, ^ h t$&\ 



TO JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

WHOSE 

JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 

DEFINED THE FIRST FIVE HUNDRED 

MILES OF THE POLAR CURRENT AND OPENED 

THE WAY FOR THE NANSEN DRIFT AND 

FOR THE FINAL SOLUTION 

OF THE ARCTIC 

QUESTION 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 1 

The Jeannette Search and the Polar Cur- 
rent. — Letter to Clements Markham 5 
The Jeannette. — Letter to New York 

Herald 41 

The Results of the Jeannette Expedition 59 
The North Pole and the South Pole . . 79 

The North Polar Basin 99 

Nansen's "Farthest North" 112 

Peary's New Plan for reaching the Pole 128 
The Antarctic 139 

APPENDIX. 

Letter from Clements Markham .... 147 
Letter from New York Herald .... 150 
The East Greenland Musk-Ox 151 



INTRODUCTION 

Beading lately an article on the sci- 
entific results of Nansen's voyage, in the 
February number of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury (" Recent Science," III.), by Prince 
Kropotkin, in which he states that Nan- 
sen's expedition was suggested largely by 
the drift of the Jeannette and of the Jean- 
nette relics, I was reminded of a paper I 
had sent to the New York Herald in 1883 
on the scientific results of the Jeannette 
expedition — which was never published 
— and of other papers written during the 
search for the Jeannette in the fall of 
1881 ; and I was somewhat surprised to 
find how persistently I had argued for 
the great polar current, even in my letter 
to Markham and in that which the Her- 



2 INTRODUCTION 

aid published, both of which were written 
before the Jeannette was heard from ; 
while in my paper on the " Results " I 
had proposed this very Arctic voyage on 
the identical plan that Nansen adopted, 
and had even given a fair general de- 
scription of the Fram so many years be- 
fore she was built. 

At the same time it is interesting to 
find how nearly Nansen's drift agrees 
with my forecast, and how completely it 
has proved my theory of the depth, the 
currents, and the general hydrography of 
the polar basin, — a theory about which 
most of the leading Arctic experts, both 
of England and America, have been, to 
say the least, exceedingly skeptical. 

I have never seen, in the whole volumi- 
nous mass of Jeannette literature, any 
satisfactory resume of the scientific re- 
sults of the voyage, — a voyage which was 
popularly regarded as a failure, because 



INTRODUCTION 3 

De Long did not reach the Pole, did not 
even attain a high latitude, and especially 
on account of its tragic ending. Yet 
Prince Kropotkin gives the Jeannette 
voyage its true place in Arctic history 
when he speaks of Nansen's drift as " em- 
bodying the drift of the Jeannette and 
the East Greenland ice-drift in one mighty 
current." . . . 

"A formidable ice-current, almost as 
mighty, and of the same length, as the 
Gulf Stream, ... a current having the 
same dominating influence in the life of 
our globe, has thus been proved to exist." 

This great Arctic current, of which the 
connecting link has been discovered by 
Nansen, having its inception north of 
Bering Strait and Wrangell Land, flows 
northwesterly above the New Siberian Is- 
lands, and northerly across, around, or 
very near the Pole, or at least far to the 
north of Franz Josef Land, and thence 



4 INTRODUCTION 

southerly by Spitzbergen, by the east 
coast of Greenland, by Labrador and by 
Newfoundland, until it meets the Gulf 
Stream, — its influence being felt even as 
far as Cape Cod on the coast of New 
England. Thus it flows across some 
seventy degrees of latitude, and is about 
5000 miles long. 
Bangok, Maine, May 1, 1897. 



THE JEANNETTE SEARCH AND THE 
POLAR CURRENT 

Bangor, Maine, November 27, 1881. 

Clements R. Maekham, 1 Esq., C. B., 
Sec'y Royal Geographical Society* 
Dear Sir, — I am unknown and with- 
out experience in Arctic matters, and 
therefore feel that I am taking a liberty 
when I address you on the subject. My 
only excuse is that, having of late 
thoroughly read up on the Arctic, I have 
come to a conclusion as to the probable 
course and present position of the Jean- 
nette, differing considerably from any I 
have yet seen. I also wish to urge an 

1 Now Sir Clements Markham, K. C. B M F. R. S., 
F. S. A., President of the Royal Geographical So- 
ciety. This letter was never published. See Appen- 
dix, Markham's letter. 



6 THE JEANNETTE SEAKCH 

English naval search expedition to Franz 
Josef Land, and to consider the situation 
from an American point of view. The 
Jeannette Expedition is lost in " the 
unknown region." For the second time 
there is to be a great " Franklin search," 
but with this difference. Franklin sailed 
under Admiralty instructions on a special 
line of exploration, and consequently the 
search was confined to a comparatively 
small portion of the Arctic area. Cap- 
tain De Long, however, was at liberty 
to go where he pleased. The Jeannette 
was not a government vessel, although 
officered and manned from our navy, and 
De Long was, therefore, free to incur 
extra hazardous risks of losing her ; and 
from his known views and plans, often 
expressed, we are quite sure that he was 
determined to go to the Pole in any way 
he could get there, and if the coast of 
Wrangell Land did not continue far to 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 7 

the north, to take to the pack, to pene- 
trate the ice-field as far as possible, and 
then alternately to steam and to drift, or 
if necessary to drift with wind and cur- 
rent, hoping to be carried across the Pole 
and out between Spitzbergen and Green- 
land, with or without his ship. He is one 
of the most venturesome men that ever 
went into the Arctic ; especially when we 
consider the present state of our know- 
ledge of the formidable character of the 
polar ice. Even in view of the daring at- 
tempts of English explorers, we can only 
say that he is the least hampered man or 
the most reckless. This attempt to float 
across the Pole may well be compared 
with Stanley's rash attempt to float down 
the Congo, except that Stanley knew that 
the river must bring him to the ocean, 
while unfortunately De Long may come 
out, if at all, on any one meridian of the 
360. 



8 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

Consequently, there are 360 possible 
theories as to the course of the Jeannette, 
of which, since the last reports of the 
Kodgers, I would suggest the following as 
the most plausible. The Jeannette was 
last seen by a whaler, September 2, 1879, 
about fifty miles south of Herald Island, 
steering north for that island. Probably 
the sea was too rough there for De Long 
to land, as Captain Berry of the Rodgers 
found it, at times, this summer ; and as 
Captain Berry has landed there twice, 
and Captain Hooper of the Corwin once, 
this year, and as the island has been 
thoroughly searched and no cairn found 
there, it is quite certain that De Long 
was not able to land. Then he may have 
gone on to the north and west and found 
Wrangell Land to be an island; proba- 
bly there was such an ice pack along 
its shores, possibly also stormy weather, 
that he did not find it practicable to land 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 9 

there. He would not be turned away 
from his main object for the sake of ex- 
ploring an island no larger than one of 
the New Siberian Islands, especially so 
late in the season, with plenty of open 
water as far as he could see to the north 
and west. Proceeding north, he would 
come to the pack, very likely about where 
the Kodgers did this year, and would ex- 
plore its edge, and make efforts to pene- 
trate it in various places at points one 
hundred and fifty to two hundred miles 
north and northwest of Wrangell Land, 
and find it practically impenetrable — 
the sea growing deeper as he went north, 
no prospect of any land very near toward 
the north, and no current moving north- 
ward or otherwise. The season of 1879 
was probably an open season in those 
waters, about the same as this year, and 
his experience, and his track to the north 
of Wrangell Land, about the same as that 



10 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

of Captain Berry last summer. Very- 
likely De Long would not run the risk of 
getting beset in that position, because, 
finding no current to the north, and know- 
ing from Baron Nordenskjbld's experi- 
ence at his winter quarters at Serdze the 
preceding winter, and from many other 
sources, that the prevailing fall and 
winter winds in that whole region were 
from the north and northwest, 1 he would 
naturally fear being drifted to the south- 
east and east into a region where he could 
not expect to make new discoveries or 

1 De Long did not meet Nordenskjold, and the pre- 
vailing winds on the Siberian coast several hundred 
miles to the southward were mostly of continental ori- 
gin, and so were no criterion, as it proved, for the 
winds north of Wrangell Land. From all the data 
then possessed — from what was known, supposed, or 
reported — as to the force and direction of the winds 
on the north and west sides of Bering Sea, and also of 
the winds at the New Siberian Islands and at Franz 
Josef Land, I theorized that the region of equal winds 
should be placed farther west towards the New Sibe- 
rian Islands ; later I learned that De Long found the 
"doldrums" nearer to Wrangell Land. See page 65. 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 11 

any brilliant progress. Consequently, I 
believe he abandoned that meridian and 
went westerly, probably north of Wran- 
gell Land, as, if he had gone south of it, 
he could probably have landed and built 
cairns, while the ice or a gale may have 
prevented his landing on the northern 
side. Captain Berry carefully examined 
the coast of Wrangell Land all the way 
around, and found no cairns, or traces of 
the Jeannette; and yet De Long would 
undoubtedly have landed, for various 
strong reasons, if it had not been very in- 
convenient to do so, or if it would not 
have involved too great a loss of time, 
when he had not a day to lose. As to 
cairns, however, he never intended that 
search should be made for him where he 
went in to the Arctic, if he did not find 
Wrangell Land to extend far to the 
north. Captain Berry did not find the 
ice-conditions favorable for crossing to 



12 THE JE ANNETTE SEARCH 

the west on the north side of the island, 
and had no great object to gain by trying 
to push through the ice in that direction. 
Yet, the ice may have been more open 
when De Long was there. 

After passing Wrangell Land, I think 
that De Long may have steered for the 
New Siberian Islands, in the hope of get- 
ting into a region where the prevailing 
winds would be more favorable to his pro- 
ject, or at least where they would not be 
against him ; also to explore the Russian 
polynias, with the expectation of find- 
ing a current running to the north or 
northwest, around to the northward of 
Franz Josef Land and out by Spitzbergen. 
Perhaps he did not find the polynias so 
extensive as he hoped, and, trying the ice 
everywhere, may have had to follow the 
shore by Cape Chelagskoi, and so on to 
near the mouth of the Lena, where a Ya- 
kut reported that he saw a three-masted 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 13 

steamer, or the smoke of a steamer, Sep- 
tember 13, 1879. The New York Herald 
was not inclined to credit this report, 
on account of the short time between the 
2d and the 13th of September. Yet De 
Long may have made rapid progress ; the 
winds may have favored him. He evi- 
dently did not waste much time at Her- 
ald and Wrangell islands. Nordenskjold 
and Palander often covered greater dis- 
tances in shorter periods in their north- 
east passage. The Yakut may have been 
incorrect about the date, and probably 
could not fix it exactly ; but such a report 
was not likely to arrive without some 
foundation, and the Jeannette was the 
only possible foundation for it. Finally, 
Nordenskjold and Lieutenant Hovgaard 
believe the report, and certainly no one is 
more competent to judge of its credibility. 1 

1 There was a similar unfounded report from the 
same region about Nansen last winter. 



14 THE JE ANNETTE SEARCH 

Thence from off the mouth of the Lena 
De Long may have steered north late in 
September to the New Siberian Islands, 
built cairns there and deposited records. 
He may have wintered there, but that 
would be no object to him. For if there 
were any open water to the north, and 
there probably always is in that locality 
in September, he would certainly go as 
far as possible to the north of those is- 
lands, then penetrate the pack in the 
most favorable place he could find, and 
keep on through it till he was finally 
beset or frozen up. 

If, therefore, we may suppose him fast 
in the pack in October, several hundred 
miles north of the New Siberian Islands, 
which way would he drift ? No one can 
say. We possess no specific data from 
which to form an opinion. The whole 
hydrographic, geographic, and meteoro- 
logical mystery of this unknown region 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 15 

is involved in this question. But my 
theory is, and De Long's theory was, that 
the Siberian ice and the drift-wood of the 
great Siberian rivers are carried across the 
Pole, or in the vicinity of the Pole, north 
of Franz Josef Land, and out in the ex- 
tensive and never-ceasing ice-drift between 
Spitzbergen and Greenland. Otherwise, 
where does all that ice come from ? The 
Kussian polynias may not be so extensive 
or so constant as many have supposed, but 
all admit that there are large areas of open 
water and of loose ice there every year, 
and possibly all the year round, — the ice 
always drifting away to the north, per- 
haps about as fast as it freezes. From 
what little we know of the ice about the 
New Siberian Islands, we judge it is not 
very heavy away from the land. It may 
have time to grow old and thick before it 
gets across to Spitzbergen; but that the 
great mass of that ice-stream, nearly two 



16 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

hundred miles wide at Spitzbergen, comes 
from a wide and probably deep polar sea 
north of Siberia and north of Franz Josef 
Land seems as clear to me as it did to 
Stanley that the Lualaba was the Congo 
and ran to the ocean. No doubt there is a 
north end to Greenland, though perhaps 
not at Cape Britannia, and some of the 
ice of the " paleocrystic sea " may get out 
and come down the East Greenland cur- 
rent ; yet if the whole of it came out 
there, the ice of that sea would not be so 
old and heavy, say forty to one hundred 
feet in thickness. Then very little such 
heavy ice is found in the East Greenland 
current — the ice there not averaging 
over one quarter to one half the thickness 
of that off the mouth of the Mackenzie 
River, Banks' Land, Prince Patrick's 
Island, the head of Smith's Sound and 
north end of Greenland, though it is 
much heavier than the ice of Baffin's Bay 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 17 

and of the straits and sounds discharging 
into it. There is a large body of land in 
the Antarctic covered by a thick glacier 
that extends far out into deep water all 
around its coasts, and ice forms in winter 
on the deep sea, for hundreds of miles to 
the north, all around the outside of the 
glacier ice-cliff, often drifting away and 
gradually spreading out in ever extending 
circles from the central land ; yet it must 
often be many years before it melts, as 
Sir James C. Koss found the ice about as 
thick as that which comes out between 
Spitzbergen and Greenland, — though one 
year he succeeded in penetrating eight 
hundred miles of this ice, because it was 
so loose he could generally sail through it. 
In the Arctic, however, the polar area is 
surrounded by continents, and the ice has 
practically only one opening of conse- 
quence in which to float out to the south- 
ward to be melted. No ice of any amount 



18 THE JE ANNETTE SEARCH 

gets out through Bering Strait, — cer- 
tainly very little that could be called polar 
ice. There is a constant flow of ice out 
of Baffin's Bay, but it consists almost en- 
tirely of one-year-old ice, formed in the 
bay itself and in the various sounds and 
straits opening into it. The polar ice is 
packed at the heads of all those straits, 
in tremendous jams of floes so large and 
thick that but few of them are needed 
to block a strait twenty miles wide ; and 
Arctic explorers are agreed that only a 
small portion of that polar ice gets through 
Barrows Strait, the channels between the 
Parry Islands, Wellington Channel, Jones' 
Sound, or Smith's Sound. The ice be- 
tween the Spitzbergen-Franz Josef Land 
group and Nova Zembla does not drift out 
far to the south, or it is ice mostly found 
on the parts of the Barents Sea where it 
originates. The currents run in, rather 
than out, to the north of Nova Zembla, and 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 19 

although there may be an eastward drift 
along the southerly coasts of Franz Josef 
Land, it is not likely that much ice comes 
out that way from the polar basin to the 
eastward and northward of Franz Josef 
Land. Probably there are lands north 
of the American continent — perhaps a 
chain of not very large islands — extend- 
ing westerly from the meridian of Green- 
land and of Smith's Sound, as suggested 
in the Threshold of the Unknown Eegion, 
which prevent the great mass of the ice 
in the inclosed area from drifting across 
the polar sea, or from getting out into the 
East Greenland current ; so that much of 
that ice, imprisoned by such islands — 
partly it may be by prevailing winds driv- 
ing down to the heads of narrow channels 
and against the coast — goes on for many 
years increasing in thickness before it gets 
away to more southern latitudes where it 
will melt. The discovery that Wrangell 



20 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

Land is an island, and not a prolongation 
of Greenland, does not disprove this the- 
ory, nor seriously affect it; for even if 
there is a larger opening than we sup- 
posed into this paleoerystic sea, the ice 
cannot get out there, because there is no 
current out. On the contrary, the prevail- 
ing winds keep the ice from floating out 
in that direction. The fact that the ice 
in terrible southerly gales, long continued, 
does not blow away from these American 
and island coasts more than a few miles 
tends to prove such an inclosure of this 
sea as practically to keep the ice from 
floating out of it. While on the other 
hand, the ice off the Siberian coasts, out- 
side the shore ice, does float away to the 
north, which indicates that there is sea, 
and not land, in that direction, — a sea 
that probably extends through to Green- 
land. The fact that there is a deep sea 
north of Spitzbergen — deepening the 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 21 

farther you go north — helps this theory. 
For if the polar sea were entirely inclosed 
by land, the ice would accumulate faster 
than it would melt, and the whole sea, 
however deep, would be covered with ice 
so thick that it would be akin to a floating 
glacier, melting only at the edges near the 
warmer land and at mouths of rivers on 
its southern coasts. That such is not the 
case is mostly due to the outflow at the 
Spitzbergen-Greenland opening. Conse- 
quently, this ice in the Greenland current 
is but five to twenty feet thick, much of 
it only one year old, which tends to show 
that the ice in this supposed sea, extend- 
ing from Siberia north of Franz Josef 
Land, and probably at the Pole itself, 
is no thicker, and that it may possibly, 
to some extent, be navigable, — although 
perhaps not to a 400-ton, 100 horse-power 
steamer, like the Jeannette. The Baffin's 
Bay one-year ice was not fairly naviga- 



22 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

ble to sailing vessels. They were often 
crushed by it and constantly beset. Even 
a small steamer like the Fox cannot al- 
ways get through it, but it is navigable to 
steamers like the Alert, Discovery, Pro- 
teus, Pandora (Jeannette), and the whaler 
Arctic. Such steamers cannot navigate 
this Spitzbergen or polar ice, at least 
with any more safety and certainty than 
the small sailing vessels of 50 and 100 
tons of the earlier explorers could sail 
through the middle-pack of Baffin's Bay. 
I would like to see a steamer of 10,000 
tons and 10,000 horse-power, built on the 
best model that could be devised for re- 
sisting ice pressure, with a bow armed to 
split the floes, and formed so as to rise 
upon them and crush them, of the greatest 
possible strength consistent with coal-car- 
rying capacity, with sufficient power to 
force the great floes apart and to squeeze 
through between them, commanded by 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 23 

Captain Markham, with Captain Adams 
of the Arctic to assist him. Such a ship, 
possibly, could contend with Spitzbergen 
ice, and steam in between Franz Josef 
Land and Nova Zembla, around Franz 
Josef Land and to the Pole, and out by 
Spitzbergen. 1 She would sail in deep seas, 
would not draw much more water than 
the ice, and if there were as many polar 
stations and expeditions all around the 
Arctic Circle as there will be a year from 
now, to retreat to in case of accident, to 
a corps of expert seal and bear hunters 
such a trip might not be extra hazardous. 
Leaving speculation aside, the practi- 
cal work for England is to send an ex- 
pedition to Franz Josef Land. The only 
thorough search for the Jeannette is a 
search of the whole border of the unknown 
area. De Long is within it somewhere, 

1 It is now evident that no conceivable ship conld 
make such a holiday excursion. 



24 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

and we do not know where he will come 
out. If he comes out at all, it is highly 
probable that he will leave his ship be- 
hind, crushed or permanently grounded in 
a stranded ice-pack ; or he may drift hope- 
lessly about till his provisions are exhaust- 
ed. There should be a complete search. 
The Rodgers will remain about Bering 
Sea. A sledge expedition, starting from 
where the party are now landed, near 
Cape Serdze (?), with Colonel Gilder (who 
was with Schwatka), will probably search 
the Siberian coast as far west as the 
mouth of the Kolyma, repeating Wran- 
gell's longest journey in the reverse di- 
rection. Lieutenant Ray, U. S. A., of 
the Signal Service Corps, has established 
his meteorological station for three years 
at Point Barrow, and will secure com- 
munication with the Esquimaux, as far 
east as the mouth of the Mackenzie River. 
He will certainly make a search expedi- 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 25 

tion in that direction this winter or next, 
as he can command the services of a 
whole Esquimaux tribe, and is prepared 
for such a journey. There was a rumor 
of shipwrecked men on that coast, which 
was not credited, because it was too vague 
from want of an interpreter, and because 
none of the Esquimaux at Point Barrow 
had heard of it, — a very unlikely thing, 
even if it had any foundation. It is 
thought that the old Indian (?) was trying 
to tell of the whaler Vigilant, with dead 
men aboard, that drifted on to the Siberian 
coast. Still Lieutenant Ray will undoubt- 
edly investigate the rumor and examine 
that coast. Then, another reason why he 
will do it is that the Bering Sea whalers 
and the San Francisco geographers all be- 
lieve that it was impossible for the Jean- 
nette to penetrate far into the ice north 
of Wrangell Land, — that stopped the 
Rodgers. But they have no doubt that 



26 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

De Long tried it, and that the winter 
winds would drift him, beset in the pack, 
to the south and east. 

Accordingly the present talk in America 
is of sending an expedition to Melville 
Island, to search the shores of Banks' 
Land, Prince Patrick's Island, etc., and 
the New York Herald urges England to 
send an expedition down the Mackenzie 
River to search easterly to Banks' and 
Wollaston Lands. Yet, I do not see how 
such a party could help De Long much, 
even if they should find him, and ques- 
tion that policy, especially if it should 
take the place of an English search to 
Franz Josef Land. But this would be a 
good opportunity to try again the North- 
west Passage, by the way of Peel, Sir 
James Ross, and Simpson's straits, with 
a good steam whaler chartered for the 
purpose, with the philanthropic motive 
of assisting in the search in addition to 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 27 

the glory of making the passage. Such a 
ship should be prepared to winter, and if 
caught halfway, to form one of the inter- 
national circle of meteorological stations 
round the Arctic, and thus to fill a gap 
that it would be very desirable to have 
occupied. Besides, the party should have 
sledges and Esquimaux hunters, as they 
might have to abandon their ship. The 
Proteus has landed Lieutenant Greely at 
Lady Franklin Bay, where the Discovery 
wintered in 1875-76. Thus another me- 
teorological station, for three years, has 
been established. Lieutenant Greely pro- 
poses to join in the search by sledging to 
Cape Joseph Henry. He is well prepared 
for exploration. Dr. Pavy will probably 
determine, at last, whether Cape Britannia 
is the northern point of Greenland, and 
Greely may possibly cross Grinnell Land 
to the west from the head of Lady Frank- 
lin Bay, and continue the search and 



28 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

exploration on its western coast. His 
steam launch may be very convenient for 
laying out depots for the Cape Joseph 
Henry and Greenland trips. Living thus 
through several summers, he may be able 
to accomplish some surveying that the 
English expedition did not have time or 
opportunity for, especially if he has some 
fresh men sent him every year, as planned. 
Commander Cheyne also proposes to go 
to the same place, to try his experiments 
with balloons. His projects are here re- 
garded as visionary. His journey to the 
Pole over the ice does not promise great 
results, and balloon journeys are too un- 
certain, even in an inhabited country in 
the temperate zone. He is lecturing in 
New York to raise enthusiasm in support 
of his project, probably supposing that 
if we were rash enough to support Mr. 
Bennett and Captain De Long in a daring 
undertaking, we might even assist his im- 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 29 

practical expedition. When our govern- 
ment consented to the Jeannette Expe- 
dition, it was presumed that Wrangell 
Land was of continental size, or at least 
that there was a shore running far to the 
north, or a series of islands that could 
be followed far into the unexplored area. 
If De Long had found such a shore, he 
would have followed it as far as possible, 
and would have come back the same way, 
with or without his ship. Our searches 
in the Corwin, last year and this, and 
the Eodgers search, were based on that 
theory, and all these proposed searches on 
the north coast of this continent and about 
its northern extensions and islands would 
have been much more important if Wran- 
gell Land had extended to the north, as 
Captain De Long was last seen going up 
the easterly side, and if beset, would sure- 
ly have drifted easterly. The Rodgers 
search, then, would have followed up that 



30 THE JEANNETTE SEAKCH 

coast-line. Since the last report from the 
Rodgers, showing that this theory was 
wrong, the most hopeful field seems to be 
to the west, instead of to the east. But, 
to continue round the circle, there will 
undoubtedly be one of the international 
meteorological stations established at 
Spitzbergen next year, and it is to be 
hoped they will try to reach Gillis Land, 
or the west coast of Franz Joseph Land, 
with sledges. It will be a most important 
field, with reference to the possible relief 
of the Jeannette party, and the same can 
be said, with less emphasis, perhaps, of 
the proposed similar station at Jan Mayen, 
and of the proposed station at Nova Zem- 
bla ; but the Russian station at the New 
Siberian Islands is very important with 
reference to the Jeannette search. The 
Russians may discover cairns of De Long, 
and if he has not drifted so far as he 
hoped, these islands may be his line of 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 31 

retreat — to the mouth of the Lena. The 
proposed trip of Lieutenant Hovgaard, of 
the Danish navy, to Cape Chelyuskin, and 
perhaps as far east as the Lena, completes 
the circle. Probably Lieutenant Hov- 
gaard places too much reliance on the Sa- 
moyede report of the two corpses, and the 
bottle or barrel of whiskey near the mouth 
of the Yenisei, as it is certainly possible 
that walrus hunters or adventurous traders 
may have followed the track of Siberia- 
koff's vessels to that point. The Jean- 
nette went into the Arctic on total absti- 
nence principles, — little if any whiskey 
among her stores. So that report is capa- 
ble of an explanation without regard to 
the Yakut report of the steamer seen off 
the mouth of the Lena. 

Of course, an effectual search at the 
edge of the pack for the Jeannette party, 
drifting on the ice, will be made every- 
where, by hundreds of whalers, walrus 



32 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

hunters, and sealers that frequent the 
Arctic seas. Commander Wadleigh did 
good work this year at St. John's, N. F., 
Iceland, Hammerfest, and on his Spitz- 
bergen cruise, in warning all the world to 
be on the lookout for such a party on the 
ice, or for such a ship beset in the ice, in- 
forming them of the possibility of their 
coming out this way, and giving them pic- 
tures of the Jeannette. Those vessels are 
much more likely to pick up De Long, if 
he ever gets out to frequented waters, 
than any search expedition. Indeed, those 
who thought that the Jeannette might get 
out this year by Lancaster Sound now 
think that Captain Adams, of the whaler 
Arctic, made the most important search 
of the season in his brilliant voyage up 
Wellington Channel, Barrows Strait, and 
down Peel Sound. If Sir James C. Ross 
had had such a season and such a ship as 
the Arctic, in 1848, he might possibly 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 33 

have found Franklin's ship, and also 
Crozier, at the time he returned from 
Back's Eiver and before he started on 
that last terrible wandering to reach his 
old Esquimaux friends at Igloolik. 

So the circle of next year's Jeannette 
search is complete, all but Franz Josef 
Land, which is left for England. The 
reasons why England should make such a 
search are overwhelming. 

First, it offers the best chance of suc- 
cess and is unprovided for, and England 
has always taken the lead in philanthropic 
enterprises. 

Second, England owes it to America to 
take part in the search. We sent four 
expeditions in search of Franklin or of 
the Franklin records, — De Haven, Kane, 
Hall, and Schwatka. Hall spent five years 
looking for possible survivors among the 
Esquimaux of Repulse Bay, Boothia, Re- 
gent's Inlet, and Igloolik, and for the jour- 



34 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

nals of the voyage, and it is extremely 
probable that some of them did survive 
for a year or two, and may have reached 
Igloolik. At any rate, Hall's search had 
a fair basis of probability. Schwatka 
tried what Sir Allen Young, in the Pan- 
dora, failed to accomplish, — a summer 
search for the records at King William's 
Land, when the snow was off the ground, 
— and made a most remarkable sledge 
journey with only a month's supplies for 
a year's trip, and lived by hunting, — a 
course that would not be so safe in higher 
latitudes. Again, Stanley found Living- 
stone, provided him with supplies for fur- 
ther explorations, and relieved the very^ 
great anxiety of England. 

Third, it is due to Mr. Leigh Smith 
that England should see what has become 
of him. He has illustrated England in 
Arctic exploration more than any other 
man since the expedition of 1875. Still, 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 35 

I believe lie got to Franz Josef Land 
this year, probably late in the season, and 
that he is safe, as he has provisions for 
wintering. He is in a position to relieve 
the Jeannette crew, if they get where he 
is ; but I suppose he is not prepared for 
extended sledge journeys to search for 
them, and possibly the Willem Barents 
crew are there somewhere, needing assist- 
ance — at least, I have not heard of their 
return home. 

Fourth, England is almost the only na- 
tion that has not agreed to establish an 
Arctic meteorological station for simul- 
taneous scientific and weather observa- 
tions. This should not be. Franz Josef 
Land is just the place where one is most 
needed to complete the line. There is 
only one in a very high latitude, the Lady 
Franklin Bay station (Spitzbergen is un- 
certain), and Franz Josef Land is most 
important of all. England has a splendid 



36 THE JE ANNETTE SEARCH 

meteorological service, and surely no na- 
tion is so largely interested in the laws 
of storms as affecting commerce. Leigh 
Smith, Captain Markham, and the Wil- 
lem Barents have shown the way to be 
perfectly sure and safe to good steamers 
in ordinary seasons, and the former has 
even selected a good place and sure har- 
bor for the station — Eira Harbor. 

Fifth, all English Arctic authorities 
agree that Franz Josef Land offers the 
widest and most interesting field for geo- 
graphical and scientific exploration of 
any in the Arctic — with also the best 
chance of carrying the exploration to a 
very high latitude. 

There are numerous other general rea- 
sons why England should — and officially 
too — keep on in her preeminent course 
of Arctic exploration. Even a generous 
rivalry with other nations, in such a work 
as this, is no mean motive. The United 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 37 

States has had six Arctic expeditions, of 
one kind and another, this year, and has 
now four government expeditions winter- 
ing in the Arctic, all doing valuable work, 
and one running terrible risks, in the ad- 
vancement of the world's knowledge — 
and has only begun the business. England 
has plenty of competent and some expe- 
rienced naval officers who are anxious to 
be employed in this service, and I suppose 
the Alert and Discovery are still good 
ships for this work. It would not be 
overdoing it if she should send a fleet to 
Eira Harbor, with coal transports in addi- 
tion, and annual supply ships to recruit 
the crews and carry the mails. One ship 
could go up the east coast of Wilczek 
Land, more especially to search for the 
Jeannette ; another up the west coast of 
Zichy Land, the line of exploration most 
generally recommended by English Arctic 
authorities; and another up Austria 



38 THE JEANNETTE SEAECH 

Sound, which would probably reach the 
highest latitude of all, and perhaps find 
the Jeannette aground on the north shore 
of Petermann Land, — by a sledge expedi- 
tion, — and rescue De Long's party from 
certain death. 

Why should not Austria Sound be as 
navigable as Smith's Sound? Payer 
found smooth ice there generally, — one- 
year ice, — and large spaces of open water 
on his return journey, as early as May. 
His report gives us considerable reason 
to conclude that it can be navigated even 
as far as Cape Vienna in August or Sep- 
tember. It is true that Leigh Smith 
found the entrance closed in 1880, but he 
did not seriously attempt to get through 
then, as he was not prepared to risk being 
caught for the winter. Probably there is 
a current or a strong tide up the sound, 
and those entrances may be blocked with 
ice-jams ; but the ice is not very heavy, 



AND THE POLAR CURRENT 39 

the season may be more favorable, and 
the Alert could perhaps ram her way- 
through. 

I would make only one more suggestion. 
Is it not generally agreed now that Esqui- 
maux fare — fresh meat and Arctic meat 
— is the most sure preventive of scurvy ? 
McClure had no scurvy at Banks' Land 
and got plenty of game. The Franklin 
search sledge expeditions, too, usually 
got plenty of game. Hall lived for years 
on walrus, seal, reindeer, etc. There are 
plenty of walrus at Franz Josef Land in 
summer, and bears winter and summer. 
If there are bears, there must be seals. 
All that saved Weyprecht and Payer 
from scurvy and enabled Payer to make 
such an extended sledge journey was the 
skill of his Tyrolean hunters in killing 
bears. Joe and Hans saved the lives of 
the Polaris party in their winter drift 
on the floe by their skill in hunting seals. 



40 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 

If Franklin had had a good corps of hunt- 
ers, the lives of the whole expedition 
might have been saved, the scurvy, of 
which they possibly died, would have been 
prevented, and they might have lived 
with or like the Esquimaux, until they 
got out to where they would have been 
rescued. 

Very truly yours, 

Henry M. Prentiss. 






THE JEANNETTE 

New York, December 14, 1881. 

To the Editor of the Herald. 1 

According to the Earl of Ellesmere, the 
naval intimates of McClure said of him 
when he sailed for the Arctic by the way 
of Bering Strait to search for Sir John 
Franklin : " That man will not return by 
the way he has gone, unless at least he 
shall meet with Franklin or find reasons 
connected with his rescue for retracing 
his course ; he will return eastward, or he 
will return no more." Commander De 
Long's friends might have said of him 
when he sailed in the Jeannette : " That 

1 This letter was -written on the train from Boston 
to New York, and was published in the New York 
Herald December IT, 1881, five days before the news 
came from the Jeannette, December 22. 



42 THE JEANNETTE 

man will not return by the way he has 
gone, unless at least he should find the 
easterly coast of Wrangell Land extend- 
ing far to the north ; he will return across 
the Pole and by the Atlantic, or he will 
return no more." 

THE JEANNETTE'S COURSE 

Captain Berry has now shown Wran- 
gell Land to be an island, and that its 
coast failed him. Consequently De Long's 
friends now believe that he took to the 
pack, to penetrate it as far as possible, 
and if permanently beset to drift with it 
across the Pole. There are two principal 
theories as to De Long's course. The one 
generally accepted by the Bering Strait 
whalers and by the San Francisco geo- 
graphers is that when De Long met the 
polar pack, perhaps where Berry found 
it, one hundred and fifty to two hundred 
miles north of Wrangell Land, he en- 



THE JEANNETTE 43 

tered the pack there and made his way 
in the ice as far as possible to the north- 
ward, and when beset or frozen in drifted 
with it, and if he got free again in 1880 
still fought his way northward till again 
beset. They also believe that the pre- 
vailing winds north of Wrangell Land 
are from the west and north, that there is 
an easterly current, and that De Long is 
drifting toward the east ; that, therefore, 
the search should be made on the north- 
ern coasts of America and of Green- 
land. 

But my theory is that De Long went 
to the westward ; that he tried the pack, 
as Captain Berry did, north of Wrangell 
Land, penetrating short distances here 
and there, and finding the ice very for- 
midable. There being no prospect of pen- 
etrating it very far, and no favoring cur- 
rent being discovered, he probably then 
turned to the westward, hoping to find the 



44 THE JEANNETTE 

Russian polynias and to get further to the 
north on the meridian of the New Sibe- 
rian Islands. He may not have been 
able to proceed directly across to the 
west, and may have followed the coast till 
near the mouth of the Lena before turn- 
ing northward again. This would be the 
surest course to take to reach the New 
Siberian Islands. 

ACROSS THE POLE 

I believe that De Long would prefer to 
make the attempt on the meridian of the 
Lena, because he knew that the prevailing 
winds at Franz Josef Land are easterly, 
as observed by Payer and Weyprecht, 
and that a great current brings down the 
polar ice between Spitzbergen and Green- 
land in a constant stream, two to three 
hundred miles wide, winter and summer. 
There is great probability that there is 
a regular ice-drift from the region of the 






THE JEANNETTE 45 

New Siberian Islands, caused by prevail- 
ing winds and currents, through a deep 
sea north of Franz Josef Land, across or 
near the Pole, and out to the south be- 
tween Spitzbergen and Greenland. He- 
denstrom, Anjou, and Wrangell have 
shown that there are large open seas 
north of Siberia, or at least that the ice 
drifts away far to the north of the New 
Siberian Islands in summer and fall. 
Therefore the presumption is that there 
are no islands or lands to the north, while 
on the other hand Collinson, McClure, 
Sherard Osborn, McClintock, and Nares 
have shown that the ice in long-continued 
and violent southerly gales never drifts 
away more than a few miles from the 
shore on the North American and Green- 
land coasts, from Point Barrow to Cape 
Britannia. Consequently they reason that 
there are sufficient undiscovered islands 
or lands to the north of this continent to 



46 THE JEANNETTE 

stop the main body of this ice from drift- 
ing away across the polar basin. They 
call this the " paleocrystic sea " — where 
the ice averages from forty to one hun- 
dred feet in thickness, grounds in ten or 
twelve fathoms of water, and is often a 
century old. 

LAND-LOCKED POLAR ICE 

Very little of the ice of this sea gets 
through the many narrow channels lead- 
ing to Baffin's Bay ; and as but a trifling 
quantity of this thick ice is found in the 
East Greenland current, it is to be sup- 
posed that Greenland extends beyond 
Cape Britannia, or that there are islands 
or shoals to the north to block the way. 
The fact that Wrangell Land is not a 
continent does not disprove the theory of 
the paleocrystic sea, as the prevailing 
winds would prevent the ice from drift- 
ing out to the westward by Wrangell 



THE JEANNETTE 47 

Land, even if there are not unknown 
islands to the northward of Point Barrow 
to block up the passage. 

FREE POLAR ICE 

The Spitzbergen and East Greenland 
ice is not like the paleocrystic ; it is only 
from five to twenty feet thick, not a fifth 
part as heavy on the average; much of 
it, even far to the north of Spitzbergen, 
being only one-year ice, very little of it 
can come from a paleocrystic sea. It 
must come from the centre of the polar 
area, from north of Franz Josef Land and 
from north of Siberia. I do not believe 
that the immense amount of drift-wood 
with which the northern shores of Spitz- 
bergen are lined and covered can be sat- 
isfactorily accounted for in any other way 
than by supposing that it comes from the 
mouth of the Lena, around by the north 
of Franz Josef Land. 



48 THE JEANNETTE 

THE NOKTHWEST COURSE 

I believe De Long preferred the north- 
west course, rather than the northeast, 
from Wrangell Land, and hoped to come 
out by Spitzbergen, rather than by the 
northerly point of Greenland. Hence 
I think the coasts of Franz Josef Land, 
Siberia, Nova Zembla, and Spitzbergen 
the most hopeful lines of search for the 
Jeannette party. Still, there is an ab- 
solute uncertainty as to the course Lieu- 
tenant De Long took, and possibly he 
did not know that the prevailing fall and 
winter winds north of Wrangell Land 
were from the north and west. Baron 
Nordenskjold came out of Bering Strait 
before De Long went in, and did not meet 
him. Consequently, De Long may not 
have known that Nordenskjold observed 
almost constant northerly and westerly 
gales at Cape Serdze Kamen the whole 



THE JEANNETTE 49 

preceding fall and winter. As nearly all 
the whalers caught in the ice in the north- 
ern part of Bering Sea have always drifted 
away into the unexplored region, and as 
the ice in that sea drifts far to the north 
in southerly gales, De Long may have 
thought the position two hundred miles 
north of Wrangell Land as good a place 
to start from as any for his daring voy- 
age, or drift, across the Pole. 

THE EASTERLY DRIFT 

If De Long went in there, we may al- 
most say we know, since Nordenskjold's 
observations, that he must have drifted 
to the eastward rather than to the west- 
ward; then the most important field of 
search is on the northern coasts of this 
continent, and this brings us to the ques- 
tion of the Northwest Passage. There are 
three sound reasons now for trying the 
Northwest Passage : — 



50 THE JE ANNETTE 

First, and much the most important, 
the search for the Jeannette. 

Second, the advantage of having an in- 
ternational polar station, even for only 
one winter, halfway between our Point 
Barrow and Lady Franklin Bay stations, 
if the expedition did not succeed in mak- 
ing the whole passage the first year. 

Third, the glory of making the passage, 
as it has never been made by a ship. 

THE SEARCH 

As to the search, it is necessary. For 
the second time in the history of polar 
research, an expedition is probably lost in 
the Arctic. There is to be another great 
Franklin search, with this difference : that 
was an English and American search of a 
limited segment of the polar circle; this 
will be a universal search of the whole 
border of the unknown region, partici- 
pated in by nearly all the civilized nations 



THE JEANNETTE 51 

of the earth. The whole Siberian coast 
will probably be searched by Captain Berry, 
Nordenskjbld, Lieutenant Hovgaard, and 
the Russians. The Russian international 
polar station at the mouth of the Lena, 
or at the New Siberian Islands, will be 
very important, for I believe De Long 
built cairns and left notice of his progress 
there, if he was not prevented :Jrom land- 
ing by heavy weather or ice, as he was at 
Wrangell and Herald islands. Spitzber- 
gen and Nova Zembla will be interna- 
tional stations, and England will search 
Franz Josef Land, I hope, on all its coasts 
and sounds with a large government ex- 
pedition for the Jeannette and for Leigh 
Smith. I think this the best chance for 
rescuing the Jeannette party. England 
is the only important nation that has 
not agreed to form an international polar 
station, and it is to be hoped, now that 
she goes to Franz Josef Land, she will 



52 THE JEANNETTE 

go there to stay, as there is no other 
such promising field for scientific and 
geographical research. All the interna- 
tional polar stations will be Jeannette 
search stations as well, and will send out 
sledge expeditions. 

WHALERS TO THE RESCUE 

Five hundred whalers, walrus hunters, 
and sealers will search for the Jeannette 
at the edge of the pack in all the seas 
that they frequent, from the Kara Sea to 
Spitzbergen and East Greenland, up Lan- 
caster Sound, and in Bering Sea. The 
Herald and Captain Wadleigh, in his last 
summer cruise in the Alliance, have inter- 
ested the whole Arctic business world in 
the search. There remains the northern 
coast of this continent. Lieutenant Ray, 
at Point Barrow, will probably be able 
to search halfway to the mouth of the 
Mackenzie River, and Lieutenant Greely, 



THE JEANNETTE 53 

at Lady Franklin Bay, will probably go 
northwest to Cape Joseph Henry, and 
will find out whether Cape Britannia is 
the termination of Greenland. But there 
is a tremendous gap between Greely and 
Eay. There ought to be three expedi- 
tions to fill it: one to make the North- 
west Passage, one to Melville and Prince 
Patrick islands, and one up Jones Sound 
to search the west coasts of Ellesmere, 
Grinnell, and Grant Lands. 

THE MACKENZIE RIVER 

The proposed Hudson Bay Company 
search is desirable, but it is not sufficient. 
Such expeditions cannot carry extra pro- 
visions to relieve a starving crew, or, if 
they do, they cannot get very far. A 
hundred miles either way from the mouth 
of the Mackenzie is about all they would 
accomplish, if they were to carry extra 
provisions of any consequence. What is 



54 THE JEANNETTE 

needed is a ship loaded with provisions, 
like the Rodgers. Then, as to the inter- 
national polar stations. It is possible, 
if a ship attempts the passage and does 
not find the Jeannette party, and returns, 
that she may have to winter somewhere 
between Dolphin and Union Strait and 
Bellot Strait. If so, the party could make 
all the simultaneous meteorological and 
scientific observations made at the other 
stations. There are to be eight or ten 
such stations all around the Arctic next 
winter, and the establishment of these 
winter stations is especially important to 
our American Signal Service. 

THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 

It is generally agreed by all Arctic 
authorities that the Northwest Passage 
can be made by such a ship as the Jean- 
nette, or the Rodgers, by way of Peel 
Sound, Sir James Ross, Dease and Simp- 



THE JEANNETTE 55 

son straits, following the coast-line every- 
where, and navigating the coast water. 
Sir Allen Young and Mr. MacGahan of 
the Herald, thought of trying it when 
they went in the Pandora (Jeannette) to 
make the summer search for the Franklin 
records at King William Land ; but they 
were not prepared to winter, found the 
season unfavorable, and turned back when 
near Bellot Strait. Captain Adams, of 
the whaler Arctic, thought he could have 
made the passage this year. He went fur- 
ther down Franklin Strait than any ship 
ever went before, except Franklin's ships, 
and then was not stopped by ice, but by 
the interests of his owners. It might be 
difficult or impossible to navigate the Vic- 
toria Strait, where Franklin's ships were 
stopped, because, from northwest winds 
and tides down McClintock Channel, and 
slack water caused by the meeting of the 
Baffin's Bay and western tides, that strait 



56 THE JE ANNETTE 

has always been found packed full of 
paleocrystic ice. But the great body of 
warm fresh water poured down by Back's 
Great Fish River tends to keep open Sir 
James Ross and Simpson straits, and 
thus to make the passage possible. When 
we consider what Collinson, McClure, and 
Franklin accomplished, navigating these 
narrow and crooked channels obstructed 
with numerous rocks and shoals, and with 
strong tides, in sailing vessels, it seems 
almost certain that a powerful steamer 
could make the passage, and probably in 
one season, if so fortunate as to have one 
like that of 1881. 

WORK FOR THE RODGERS 

I propose, if no one else wants to try 
the passage, that Captain Berry, with the 
Rodgers, 1 should attempt to come home 

1 The Rodgers was burned in winter quarters at St. 
Lawrence Bay. 



THE JEANNETTE 57 

that way next August. He will pick up 
Iris Siberian sledge party by that time. 
He can safely leave Bering Sea and Point 
Barrow to the whalers and to Lieutenant 
Kay. If he has to winter, your corre- 
spondent, Colonel Gilder, is familiar with 
the only questionable part of the North- 
west Passage, and if worst came to worst, 
could show them how to live like Esqui- 
maux, and guide them out to Hudson's 
Bay. There is nothing better for Captain 
Berry to do. He will not run the risk 
of losing a government expedition, trying 
to discover unknown lands to the north 
of Bering Sea. This is the best line of 
search left him after his sledge party's 
return. 

A UNITED EFFORT 

There is a great awakening of interest 
in Arctic matters, and there is to be a 
grand assault made next year on all the 



58 THE JEANNETTE 

Arctic mysteries, — meteorological, hy- 
drographical, geographical, and scientific, 
— a very complete and thorough Jean- 
nette search, and the wide space between 
Kay and Greeley ought to be effectually 
filled by a searching ship starting from 
Bering Sea. 

H. M. Peentiss. 



THE RESULTS OF THE JEANNETTE 
EXPEDITION 1 

To the Editor of the Herald. 

In 1879, the Wrangell Land route to 
the far north was considered one of the 
most important that was left to be ex- 
plored. From the information obtained 
by Wrangell, the discoveries of Kellet, 
of John Rodgers, and of various whaling 
captains, and according to the theories 
of such eminent Arctic authorities as 
Clements Markham and Dr. Petermann, 
Wrangell Land was generally supposed 
to be a large mass of land stretching far 
to the north, — perhaps even to the Pole 
itself, — and Dr. Petermann believed it 

1 Never published. See Appendix, Letter from 
the Herald. 



60 THE RESULTS OF 

to be the other end of Greenland pro- 
longed across the Pole. The very slight 
rise and fall of the tides, the accumula- 
tion of ancient stratified ice of extraor- 
dinary thickness, indicated that the sea 
north of America was mostly inclosed, — 
a sort of Arctic Mediterranean. All other 
routes, except that by Franz Josef Land, 
had been abandoned as impracticable. 

De Long undoubtedly planned to fol- 
low the coast of Wrangell Land as far 
north as possible with his ship, to find a 
harbor and winter there, to make advance 
depots of provisions that fall, and to fol- 
low the coast with sledges in the spring. 
He would make all the scientific obser- 
vations, explore a large part of the un- 
known region, and attain a high latitude. 
It was the general belief of people best 
acquainted with the subject that he would 
accomplish all this, and all the geographi- 
cal societies were anxious to see some- 



THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 61 

body make the attempt. De Long hoped 
to reach the Pole, but that was more than 
good judges expected. 

The Jeannette, however, was caught in 
the pack and drifted across the Wrangell 
Land of the maps, — across where the 
Blevin Mountains were laid down ; and it 
was discovered that the fabled Wrangell 
Land of the last fifty years was merely 
an ordinary island of small importance. 
The theories of geographers had to be 
readjusted, and this route of Arctic ex- 
ploration was proved to be a geographical 
illusion. The subsequent exploration of 
the island and of the seas for one hun- 
dred and fifty miles farther north by the 
Eodgers Search Expedition was a most 
fortunate and valuable supplement to De 
Long's discovery, for which Lieutenant 
Berry is entitled to the highest credit; 
yet the important disclosure that Wran- 
gell Land was an island and an impracti- 



62 THE RESULTS OF 

cable base for higher exploration belongs 
to De Long, and would have been pub- 
lished to the world if the Rodgers had 
never sailed in search of the Jeannette. 

Consequently, it is now settled that 
there is no coast left by which any 
further very great advance can be made 
into the unexplored region except in the 
Franz Josef archipelago, — another step 
towards the solution of the great Arctic 
problem. 

THE GREAT POLAR CURRENT 

The Jeannette drifted in the ice nearly 
two years, and thus established the exist- 
ence of an Arctic drift or current. There 
is no reasonable doubt that the ice regu- 
larly drifts from the northwest of Wran- 
gell Land in about the same general direc- 
tion as the course of the Jeannette, as indi- 
cated on Lieutenant Danenhower's chart. 
There may be variations in different years, 



THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 63 

but there is probably a moderately regu- 
lar annual drift in the general direction, 
whether caused by a current or by the 
preponderance of the prevailing winds. 
This movement was so constant and direct 
in the spring of 1881, and so powerful 
in May and June along to the east and 
northeast of the New Siberian Islands, 
that it is beyond doubt that the ice from 
the region to the northwest of Wrangell 
Land floats off to the north and west, 
and consequently to the Atlantic, to be 
melted in more southern latitudes. It does 
not drift out through Bering Strait. It 
cannot forever stay in the polar basin, for 
if that sea were entirely inclosed on the 
line of the Arctic Circle, it would be filled 
with ice to the depth of one or two thou- 
sand feet, if not everywhere to the bottom, 
— an enormous glacier, a polar ice-cap! 
For the mean annual temperature is 
so low in the polar regions that not half 



64 THE RESULTS OF 

the annual accumulation of ice and snow 
could ever be melted in those latitudes. 
At 75° or 80° ice freezes in still water to 
seven or eight feet in thickness, while in 
summer three or four feet of the surface 
of the pack melts away ; but at the Pole 
and within the 80th parallel — a circle of 
fourteen hundred miles in diameter — 
more ice must freeze, and less can be 
melted. 

The polar sea, however, — over large 
areas, — is so deep, and has such gyrat- 
ing and conflicting currents, that the ice 
never becomes absolutely fixed over its 
whole surface, and there is no doubt at 
all that the great mass of the polar ice 
drifts out of the Arctic Ocean through 
the deep and broad opening between 
Spitzbergen and Greenland into the At- 
lantic, in a constant and regular stream, 
— the discharge of an incipient glacier. 

Lieutenant Danenhower graphically 



THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 65 

characterizes the region north of Wran- 
gell Land, where the Jeannette drifted for 
more than a year in a complicated series 
of rhomboids and circles, as the " Arctic 
doldrums," — a locality where there is 
no current, or merely slight currents in 
the nature of eddies, and no prevailing 
winds. 

From the east of "Wrangell Land the 
drift is probably north and east, and is 
obstructed by islands to the north of 
America and to the north of Greenland, 
so that some of that ice may be a cen- 
tury in getting out by the north point 
of Greenland into the Atlantic ; and this 
accumulates by crushing into masses and 
by the excess of the annual freezing and 
snow-fall over the annual melting, until it 
becomes fifty to one hundred feet thick. 
No relic of any of the whaling ships, nor 
of whole fleets of whalers, frozen in or 
beset in Bering Sea and drifted away 



M THE RESULTS OF 

northerly into the unknown region, has 
ever again been seen, while on the other 
side of the Arctic Ocean the driftwood of 
the Lena River is piled up in heaps on 
the shores of Spitzbergen. 

The Jeannette drift indicates that the 
ice from the northwest of Wrangell Land 
floats off to the north of Franz Josef Land 
and joins the great East Greenland cur- 
rent. The large mass of fresh water from 
the Lena, Yana, Kolyma, Olenek, and 
other Siberian rivers — especially in the 
summer — must give a considerable im- 
petus towards the beginning of a current, 
and must assist the movement of the ice 
out by the New Siberian Islands, across 
by the way of the Pole, or at least to the 
north of Franz Josef Land. 

This drift of the Jeannette destroys 
some theories as to Arctic currents that 
have met with wide acceptance among 
the hydrographers. Sir Wyville Thomp- 



THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 67 

son thought that the Gulf Stream ran 
into the Arctic by the north end of Nova 
Zembla along the coasts of Russia, Siberia, 
and North America, and by the northerly 
point of Greenland, — thus making a cir- 
cuit of the polar sea, — and joined the 
great East Greenland current out into 
the Atlantic. But the drift of the Tege- 
thoff by Nova Zembla northeasterly, and 
around to the north and west in a semi- 
circle to Franz Josef Land, discredited 
that theory, and this Jeannette drift gives 
it a final quietus. 

Thus the course of the Jeannette drift 
throws new light upon the obscure ques- 
tion of Arctic currents. In addition, it 
suggests a possibility of 

A NEW SCHEME OF POLAR EXPLORATION 

A ship might drift in the ice — or upon 
the ice — from the New Siberian Islands 
to the north of Franz Josef Land, and 



68 THE RESULTS OF 

possibly far to the north and near or 
across the Pole, and out into the Atlantic 
between Spitzbergen and Greenland. 

Much has been learned of Arctic hy- 
drography by the involuntary movements 
of ships beset in the pack. The aban- 
doned H. M. S. Resolute drifted from 
Barrows Strait to Labrador, and this 
drift of the Eesolute, together with that 
of McClintock in the Fox, of De Haven 
with the first Grinnell Expedition, and 
of the Polaris party on the ice floe, deter- 
mined the currents out of Lancaster and 
Smith's sounds through Baffin's Bay and 
Davis Strait to Labrador and Newfound- 
land. The drift of the Hansa was a strik- 
ing proof of the East Greenland current. 
The wonderful drift of the Tegethoff — 
from Nova Zembla far to the northeast, 
and around and back and finally to Franz 
Josef Land — demolished some hydro- 
graphic theories and showed the great 



THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 69 

and increasing depth of the polar sea 
the farther the vessel was borne towards 
its centre. Thus involuntarily Franz Jo- 
sef Land was discovered ; and though the 
expedition was a miserable failure as to 
its main object — the Northeast Passage 
— and though Payer and Weyprecht left 
their ship behind on top of a grounded 
ice-floe, yet the expedition was otherwise 
a grand success and made the most bril- 
liant Arctic discovery of this generation. 

» If the Jeannette had been forced up by 
the pressure on to a solid floe, like the 
Tegethoff, she might possibly have been 
drifted out by Spitzbergen in another year 
or two, might have got clear of the ice 
the second or third year, before round- 
ing Cape Farewell, and might perhaps 
have sailed back to New York safe and 
sound, thus making the tour of the 
world by a new route, — across the Pole. 
Again, if De Long had gone into camp 



70 THE RESULTS OF 

for the season on the largest and heaviest 
floe he could find after the Jeannette was 
crushed, he might have drifted out in one 
year to the vicinity of Spitzbergen. Then, 
dragging his boats to open water, he would 
probably have found walrus hunters, or 
even some search expedition, at Spitz- 
bergen. 

For a long time before she was crushed 
the Jeannette had been drifting at the 
rate of twelve miles a day, and there is 
every reason to suppose that those ice- 
fields keep on at that rate across the polar 
basin all summer ; but twelve geographi- 
cal miles a day would have covered the 
distance of fourteen hundred miles in four 
months, and De Long's ice-floes would 
have passed by Spitzbergen before the 
next winter. It is absolutely possible 
that a ship could drift in the ice from the 
New Siberian Islands to opposite Spitz- 
bergen between June and October. But 



THE JE ANNETTE EXPEDITION 71 

a winter drift might be quite different. 
Then Siberia is in a state of congelation, 
and all its rivers are at their lowest stage. 
In the deep seas of the polar basin, the 
pack, though always in motion, is frozen 
up and to a certain degree consolidated, 
and no intelligent prediction can be made, 
at present, of what the winter drift would 
be. Most likely it would prove to be 
very inconstant and irregular. 

AN IDEAL POLAR SHIP 

No doubt it was very hazardous for 
De Long to put the Jeannette into that 
twenty-foot ice and to run the risk of get- 
ting beset. He had a perfect right to 
take the risk, — that was a part of the 
original plan, — and the ship did not be- 
long to the navy. The whalers, sealers, 
and walrus hunters take just such risks 
every year. No practicable ship could 
be devised that would endure the direct 



72 THE RESULTS OF 

maximum pressure of the polar ice ; such 
ice must go under her and lift her out of 
water, or must go through her side. No 
ship, however, has yet been built solely 
for the purpose of polar exploration, ex- 
cept the Eira. The whalers and sealers 
must have large carrying capacity. Other 
Arctic ships have been selected somewhat 
at random. 

Possibly a ship could be modeled 
mainly with reference to escaping the 
pressure ; of such a shape that the ice 
would naturally run under her, with a 
rudder and screw that could be unshipped 
and lifted out of water, with no protrud- 
ing keel, forefoot, or stern-post, or with 
a rudder-post that could be raised with 
the rudder, so that there would be nothing 
to prevent the ice from running under 
the ship and nothing to be injured or car- 
ried away, — the strongest possible ship, 
with all kinds of composite sheathing, an 



THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 73 

outer skin partly covered with steel plates, 
and an inner skin and layers of felting 
with another sheathing inside the felting ; 
with many compartments, braces, trusses, 
and bulkheads; with a solid bow and 
large steam power, to ram the floes so as 
to force them apart, — built mainly for 
strength, coal-capacity, steam-power, and 
to rise to pressure. 

Very likely, when firmly frozen in dur- 
ing the winter, the ship could not rise to 
pressure, but no Arctic exploring ship 
that has yet drifted, beset, through the 
Arctic night has ever been crushed in the 
winter. The summer is the dangerous 
time, when the floes are more broken and 
the ship gets free. 

With such a ship, a man like De Long 
might proceed to the New Siberian Is- 
lands by either way, from Bering Strait 
by Cape Chelagskoi, or from the North 
Cape by Cape Chelyuskin, and get as far 



74 THE RESULTS OF 

north as possible in September, for all 
Arctic waters are less encumbered by ice 
in August and September, and then he 
might deliberately put his ship into the 
ice and ram her through the polar pack 
until she was finally beset and frozen in, 
to drift with the winds and the currents — 
whither ? I believe he would drift to the 
Atlantic. He should be so equipped as 
to be able to live on the largest and thick- 
est floe in his vicinity all winter, if he 
should lose his ship, and he should have 
all kinds of boats provided for all possible 
emergencies. And thus, in any case, he 
would have a fighting chance of getting 
out alive, to give the world the benefit of 
his discoveries. 

In this random ice-voyage he might 
discover new lands ; he would sound and 
record the depth of the sea; he might 
dredge a new submarine fauna, — per- 
haps the surviving remnant of a past geo- 



THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 75 

logical age, — and lie would be a living 
proof of the polar drift, and should give 
many new data to the meteorologists and 
to the hydrographers. 

De Long contemplated the chance of 
an involuntary drift when he started. If 
Wrangell Land should fail him, he had 
determined to put his ship into the pack, 
and, if caught, to see where he would 
drift and what he would discover. He 
hoped to drift across the Pole to the At- 
lantic. 

DE LONG DISCOVEKED NEW LANDS 

The Jeannette, Henrietta, and Bennett 
islands are a northeasterly extension of 
the New Siberian group. De Long's most 
important work, however, was in explor- 
ing new seas. Von WrangelTs Siberian 
" polynia " is a myth. 

In all their tremendous dog -sledge 
northerly journeys over the Siberian seas, 



76 THE RESULTS OF 

Von Wrangell, Hedonstrom, and Anjou 
always came to open water. They never 
failed to find the sea free from ice late in 
the summer as far as they could see from 
the Liakhoff Islands. Petermann, Kane, 
Hayes, and many others, based their (ex- 
ploded) theory of " the Open Polar Sea " 
very largely on these polynias of the 
Russians. Now De Long has abolished 
the polynias from our Arctic maps, and 
he would easily agree with Nares, with 
Payer, and with everybody else, at the 
present day, that there is no " Open 
Polar Sea ; " that is, at least, not in the 
winter. In August that sea is open along 
the shore all around. The ice-pack 
grounds, in many places, in thirty or 
sixty feet of water. This " land-water " 
freezes every winter and melts in summer. 
The ice is melted away from wide areas, 
or driven off by the currents, opposite the 
mouths of all the rivers ; but the ice-fields 



THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 77 

themselves drift away to the north from 
Bering Sea, and generally from the Si- 
berian coast. The polynia opposite the 
Lena does not wholly depend upon the 
warmth of the Lena water, but largely 
upon the enormous quantity of water 
poured out by the summer flood, and upon 
the drift to the northward that is caused 
by the surplus of waters of all those Sibe- 
rian rivers. 

It was very unfortunate for De Long 
that more was not known of the local dis- 
tribution of the tribes along the Siberian 
coast. He should have steered his boats 
for the mouth of the Yana or for Upper 
Bulun. Melville has detailed the geo- 
graphy of all that region, — another valu- 
able result of the Jeannette Expedition. 
Many and painful have been the sacrifices 
while man has been slowly acquiring his 
present knowledge of his planet, and there 
have been none more heartrending than 



78 THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 

the tragedy of the Lena. Still future 
generations will honor the promoter of 
the Jeannette Expedition for his philan- 
thropic liberality, and De Long will have 
everlasting fame for his daring enterprise 
and heroic martyrdom in a noble cause. 
The world will never rest content until the 
earth is fully explored, nor until all its 
phenomena attainable to human science 
shall be known and utilized. 

Henry M. Prentiss. 

Bangor, Me., November 6, 1883. 



THE NORTH POLE AND THE SOUTH 
POLE 1 

At the North Pole, the Arctic Ocean 
is probably a thousand fathoms deep, 
while the South Pole is at the centre of 
a glaciated table-land thousands of feet 
above the level of the sea. The Arctic 
Ocean discharges its ice in fields, some of 
of it a century old, and a hundred feet 
thick, mostly by an ocean current through 
the narrow gap between Spitzbergen and 
Greenland ; while the Antarctic ice floats 
off, in the form of great tabular icebergs 
hundreds of feet high, one or two thou- 
sand feet thick, and often miles in area, 
in all directions, as along the spokes of 
a wheel, from the ice cliffs encircling the 

1 Published in the Overland Monthly, July, 1890. 



80 THE NORTH POLE AND 

whole glaciated surface of the Antarctic 
continent. The South Pole will be finally 
attained by a sledge expedition, across 
seven hundred miles of inland ice ; while 
the only way to reach the North Pole is 
to float across it. 

The more we know of the earth, the 
smaller it seems, and we shall inevitably 
explore every hole and corner of it. If 
one may judge by what has been accom- 
plished since Columbus set sail from 
Palos, another century should complete 
the work. Three quarters of the world 
was then unknown ; yes, nine tenths of it 
was to Europeans an unexplored region : 
while now, since Stanley has filled the 
last important gap in the map of Africa, 
less than one sixtieth part of the earth's 
surface remains to be explored. 

The men who plant a scientific obser- 
vatory at the South Pole, and there main- 
tain it for three years, will win undying 



THE SOUTH POLE 81 

fame. It may cost millions of money, 
the work of a thousand men, the loss of 
a hundred lives, but money is a drug in 
the markets of the world, and human life 
is cheap; and neither the men nor the 
money will be found wanting. 

We have been blindly groping in the 
Arctic darkness for a century past, hunt- 
ing for a Northwest Passage ; for Sir 
John Franklin ; for the Open Polar Sea. 
Parry even sought in one of his four Arc- 
tic voyages to reach the Pole itself, by a 
boat expedition through and over the float- 
ing ice north of Spitzbergen, but found 
that he was traveling against the stream. 
Disraeli ordered Nares to go to the North 
Pole, and Nares followed the coast-lines 
of Smith Sound, discovered by Kane, 
Hayes, and Hall ; and when the land 
ended, Markham failed in his attempt to 
reach the Pole over the floating ice of the 
Arctic Ocean. 



82 THE NORTH POLE AND 

De Long started for the Pole by way 
of Bering Strait, to follow the coast- 
line of Wrangell Land, which was as- 
sumed by Petermann to be the westerly 
end of Greenland prolonged across the 
Pole, and by Clements Markham to be 
the southerly end of an extensive Arctic 
land. But finding Wrangell Land to be 
only a small island, De Long allowed his 
ship to be frozen in, as he had boldly 
decided to keep on to the northward, 
and, if necessary, to float in the pack to 
destruction, or to new discoveries. 

Many of the most important Arctic 
discoveries have been made by such in- 
voluntary drifting. The Resolute, the 
Fox, and above all the Polaris party on 
the ice floe, determined the currents of 
Lancaster and Smith sounds, of Baffin's 
Bay and of Davis Strait, to Labrador 
and Newfoundland ; and the drift of the 
Hansa proved the East Greenland cur- 



THE SOUTH POLE 83 

rent. Payer drifted a year and a half in 
the Tegethoff, and discovered Franz Josef 
Land, and from his drift we can infer 
that the opening between Franz Josef 
Land and Cape Chelyuskin is mostly 
closed by lands or islands. De Long's 
drift began in what Danenhower graph- 
ically termed the "Arctic doldrums," 
north of Wrangell Land, where, frozen 
into the pack, he floated about at the 
mercy of every wind, backward and for- 
ward, round and round, for a year before 
he got fairly started ; then he was carried 
by the ice in a northwesterly course five 
hundred miles toward the Atlantic, and 
discovered three islands ; but his ship was 
crushed at a point northeast of the New 
Siberian Islands. The Jeannette had 
been drifting fast in a direct course for 
months before she sank, and if she had 
not been wrecked she would have drifted 
in another year to the north of Franz 



84 THE NORTH POLE AND 

Josef Land, and out between Spitzbergen 
and Greenland into the Atlantic. Dr. 
Nansen says that the articles abandoned 
on the ice by De Long, picked up three 
years after off the coast of Greenland and 
carried to Denmark, are of such a char- 
acter as to establish their own identity. 
The driftwood on the north coast of 
Spitzbergen comes mostly from the Lena 
River. The ice of the polar sea would 
become a glacier if it were not brought 
out to warmer latitudes by some ocean 
current, and undoubtedly the great body 
of the polar ice does come out between 
Greenland and Spitzbergen. 

The polar ice north of Bering Sea 
drifts northeasterly around the north 
point of Greenland, northwesterly north 
of Franz Josef Land, and northerly 
across the Pole, and then out into the 
Atlantic. 

The polar sea is two thousand miles in 



THE SOUTH POLE 85 

diameter. Though comparatively shal- 
low north of the continents, it is over 
eight thousand feet deep north of Spitz- 
bergen, and grows deeper towards the 
north. It is always covered by fields 
of ice ; the ice constantly accumulates ; it 
freezes not only through the six months' 
night of winter, but more or less all the 
year round. The ice is never stationary ; 
fields crush against fields, floes against 
floes; they pile up at the edges, and 
over-ride and under-run each other. That 
part of the sea north of America and 
west of Grinnell Land is probably in- 
closed to some extent by islands, or pos- 
sibly northwesterly winds are prevalent, 
and drive the ice down against all those 
island coasts, from Banks' Land and the 
Parry Islands to the north end of Green- 
land, so that some of the ice gets to be 
a century old, partially stratified, and a 
hundred feet thick, before it ever gets 



86 THE NORTH POLE AND 

out to the Atlantic to be melted. All the 
Franklin search expeditions found such 
ice on those northwestern shores. Cap- 
tain Nares called it the " paleocrystic 
ice." All the narrow channels flowing 
towards Baffin's Bay are choked up with 
it, and that is the reason why no ship 
could ever get through any of them. The 
Kara Sea also is an Arctic eddy, in which 
much of the ice is very old and thick. 

The principal advantage to be gained 
by drifting across the North Pole woidd 
be to determine the hydrography of the 
polar ocean. Even if there were an 
island at the Pole, no regular scientific 
station could ever be maintained there. 
A ship might drift there, and even win- 
ter there, and the party might get out 
alive in boats by way of Spitzbergen, but 
no regular communication could with cer- 
tainty be kept up with a station on such 
an island. 



THE SOUTH POLE 87 

The coasts of the islands of the Franz 
Josef group, and probably of other islands 
and lands not yet discovered, of Jones' 
Sound, and the west coast of Grinnell 
Land, the northeast coast and north end 
of Greenland, will eventually be explored, 
and the geography, the amount of land 
and water, the depth and the currents of 
the polar sea, and all other Arctic ques- 
tions of interest to science, will be in- 
vestigated. Another expedition, larger 
than Dr. Nansen's, should cross Greenland 
in its widest part, from Sabine Island 
to Upernavik, or from Scoresby Sound 
to Disco. 

The Northwest Passage can now be 
made in any favorable season by some 
Arctic yachtsman and sportsman like 
Leigh Smith in the Eira, just for the sake 
of sport, for glory, and incidentally for 
science, by avoiding the channel where 
Franklin was beset and taking the back 



88 THE NORTH POLE AND 

channel around the east side of King 
William's Island, and by Dease and 
Simpson Strait, following the land-water. 
Still, such an expedition should be pre- 
pared to winter on the way ; and, in case 
of disaster, to come out overland with 
hunters and magazine rifles, perhaps to 
Hudson's Bay, in the track of Schwatka 
and Gilder. 

The one important Arctic expedition 
of the future, however, will follow Nor- 
denskjold by Cape Chelyuskin, or more 
likely will follow his track backward from 
Bering Strait by Cape Chelagskoi, to the 
open water at the mouth of the Yana and 
of the Lena ; push north the same year, or 
the next, in September, when that sea is 
most open, to the region northeast, and 
as far northeast as possible, of Bennett 
Island, where the Jeannette sank; pro- 
ceed north until beset, and then drift in 
the pack across or near the Pole to the 



THE SOUTH POLE 89 

Atlantic. The ship may run aground on 
Franz Josef Land, or may be crushed, 
or may be forced up on top of the ice as 
the Tegethoff was, and so may float to 
the Atlantic before the ice melts from 
under her. No hollow ship can endure 
the direct crushing force of the paleo- 
crystic ice ; but a ship might be designed 
of the greatest practicable strength and 
solidity, of such shape that when nipped 
the ice would tend to run under the ship 
and lift her entirely out of water. If the 
ship were crushed, the crew could prob- 
ably escape over the ice, and with boats. 
Parry, Kane, the Hansa crew, Payer, 
Leigh Smith, the Proteus and Polaris 
parties, and numerous others, have made 
such voyages out of the Arctic with boats, 
or by floating out on the ice-floes. No 
exploring expedition that has tried it, or 
that was not disabled by scurvy, ever 
failed to succeed in such an attempt. 



90 THE NORTH POLE AND 

Franklin was not properly equipped ; he 
waited too long, and, instead of trying to 
go back by boat the way he had come, 
planned a land route south across British 
America. Greely succeeded, but he did 
not find the support he had a right to 
expect at the mouth of Smith Sound. 
De Long had inconceivably bad luck : he 
had to start against the current ; his 
boats were too heavy ; too much time was 
lost in various ways, so that he was too 
late in the season ; he met a furious gale, 
which swamped one of his boats, and 
partially disabled the crews of the two 
others ; while his own boat's crew was 
the unluckiest of all, in missing the na- 
tives. If De Long had known all we 
now know of the Lena Delta, he would 
have been saved. If he had floated all 
summer, and wintered on the largest and 
thickest floe he could find near where his 
ship went down, he would have had a fair 



THE SOUTH POLE 91 

chance of escaping safely by way of Spitz- 
bergen. 

The Antarctic, however, is by far the 
most important field of future polar ex- 
ploration. 

First, a steamer should circumnavigate 
the Antarctic continent. Sir James Ross 
sailed round it; but as the Erebus and 
Terror were sailing ships, he could not 
always closely follow the coast. Besides, 
his principal object was to make a mag- 
netic survey, and to locate the southern 
magnetic pole. But no steamer has ever 
been to the Antarctic continent. All 
attempts at Antarctic explorations ceased 
over forty years ago. Probably no har- 
bor could be found where a ship could 
winter; hardly a spot has ever been 
found where a boat could land. Ross 
landed once at the risk of his life, on a 
narrow ledge at the foot of an ice cliff ; 



92 THE NORTH POLE AND 

D'Urville landed in a bay surrounded by- 
cliffs of glacier ice; Wilkes and the 
United States Exploring Expedition never 
found a chance to land; and "Weddell, 
who sailed into the Antarctic south of the 
Atlantic, never reached the land. 

Ross sailed along an ice cliff two hun- 
dred feet high, in water two thousand 
feet deep, for four hundred miles. That 
was fifty years ago, before anything was 
known of the glacial period. He knew 
nothing of glaciated continents ; he could 
hardly call it land ; so he named that cliff 
the " Great Icy Barrier." At the height 
of the great ice age, a ship might have 
sailed for a thousand miles along such a 
cliff, a hundred or more miles out from 
the American coast, from off Cape Cod 
to Newfoundland and Labrador ; or along 
the European coast from a hundred miles 
off Ireland to the North Cape. If the 
ice should ever entirely melt from the 



THE SOUTH POLE 93 

Antarctic continent, it might not all 
prove to be solid land. The European 
ice-sheet once spread out smoothly from 
the Scandinavian highlands over the Gulf 
of Bothnia and the Baltic, Denmark, the 
German Ocean, and the British Isles, and 
far out to sea. The extensive ice cliff 
that Ross discovered proves the existence 
of a far more extensive land, as the ice 
cliff in a deep sea off Great Britain in 
the glacial period must have indicated the 
continent of Europe. 

At the foot of the volcanoes Erebus 
and Terror, at the west end of Ross's 
Great Icy Barrier, there were still no 
harbors, as all the bays were filled with 
glaciers. The glacier not only comes to 
the sea level, but runs far out to sea, all 
around the Antarctic continent, at least 
as far as is known ; still some place will 
undoubtedly be found in that more than 
five thousand miles of coast, where a 



94 THE NORTH POLE AND 

party can be landed with coal, supplies, 
and materials to build and maintain a 
permanent station, from which sledge 
expeditions can go over the inland ice to 
the South Pole. Dr. Nansen has shown 
that such traveling is practicable, by- 
crossing Greenland, three hundred miles, 
two years ago, over such inland ice. 

A scientific station at the South Pole 
could be established and maintained for 
several years for half the money that was 
spent in the search for Franklin. A 
thousand men, relays, and a progressive 
system of stations, with annual supply 
ships, — the expedition should be on some 
such scale to insure a perfect success. 
For all this sledging, Scandinavian hunt- 
ers, equipped like Doctor Nansen' s Green- 
land party, would seem far more suitable 
than the English sailors, who often made 
sledge journeys of a thousand miles in the 
Franklin search. 



THE SOUTH POLE 95 

For a preliminary survey, any good 
steam whaler could probably pass through 
the loosely packed ice to the Antarctic 
coast, steam around the South Pole in one 
season, and find a landing place suitable 
for a station. Open water would be found 
along an ice cliff for most of the way 
in January, February, and March. The 
Arctic Ocean is crammed full of ice ; it 
is jammed against the shores, the narrow 
openings out of that sea (all but Bering 
Strait) are choked with it as it is carried 
out by currents toward the Atlantic, and 
navigation along Arctic coasts is corre- 
spondingly difficult. But as there is no- 
thing to prevent the ice from radiating 
off the coasts of the Antarctic continent, 
very little obstruction would be met. 
There would be many icebergs to be 
avoided, but the daylight would be al- 
most continuous. The winds or currents 
might carry the ice against the land on 



96 THE NORTH POLE AND 

some coasts, but it would be mostly ice 
that was only a year or so old. 

A party might land somewhere and 
make a dash for the interior ; but no- 
thing very important can be done in the 
way of inland exploration, without a large 
force of men, plenty of time, and a per- 
manent station. 

What is the advantage to be gained ? 

Many chapters have been written on 
the advantages of polar exploration, but 
there is room for only a few suggestions. 

The southern hemisphere is ten degrees 
colder than the northern ; how cold is it 
at the South Pole, if in the centre of a 
high tableland on a glaciated continent ? 
To understand the past history of the 
earth, we must know all about glaciated 
continents. We have only two of them 
left, and the Antarctic is more impor- 
tant than Greenland, for it is larger, 
colder, and more completely glaciated. 



THE SOUTH POLE 97 

The glacial period still exists to-day in 
the Antarctic, in as severe a form as 
ever in Northern America or in Northern 
Europe. 

"We are just beginning to make a scien- 
tific study of the weather. We can never 
perfect that science, however, even if the 
world should unite in an international 
service, until we learn all about the 
weather conditions of the polar regions. 
We have learned much of that unknown 
force called electricity, and are begin- 
ning to suspect that this globe is a great 
electrical machine with magnetic poles 
of positive and negative electricity, and 
that all planets and suns must be elec- 
trified, and even that gravitation may be 
the result of electric attraction. When 
Franklin caught the lightning with his 
kite, the world may well have said, " Very 
curious, but what is the good of it ? " 
Discoveries that to our ignorance seem 



98 THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLE 

unimportant often lead to great results. 
The questions relating to the southern 
magnetic pole are some of the most im- 
portant that scientists would like to inves- 
tigate in the polar regions. The whole 
civilized world could well afford to con- 
tribute to a great scientific Antarctic ex- 
ploration. 



THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 

I sent the preceding paper to Dr. 
Nansen several months before it was pub- 
lished in the " Overland," and he penciled 
an interrogation point at the end of the 
opening sentence, "At the North Pole 
the Arctic Ocean is probably a thousand 
fathoms deep." The opinions of experts 
in Arctic matters have generally favored 
the conception of shallow seas throughout 
the Arctic area, because the sea had al- 
ways been found shallow north of the 
continents as far as soundings had been 
taken. Yet the great oceanic depression 
occupied by the Atlantic was known to 
continue northward west of Spitzbergen, 
and the most northerly sounding showed 
a depth of over 8000 feet about 150 miles 



100 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 

north of Spitzbergen, while now Nansen 
has extended the Atlantic basin far to- 
wards the centre of the polar area and 
across some 1400 miles, nearly to the 
New Siberian Islands, with soundings of 
10000 to 12000 feet. 

Now, although Prince Kropotkin ad- 
mits that 2000 fathoms 300 miles from 
the Pole indicates an equal depth at the 
Pole and far beyond it, he says the 3000 
fathoms line passes within a hundred 
miles from Boston, and suggests that 
the great ice-current in which the Pram 
drifted may run in a deep trough, or 
downward fold of the earth's crust, some 
300 miles wide, along the north side of a 
submarine oceanic ridge, of which Spitz- 
bergen and Franz Josef Land are the 
visible projections, and which may extend 
far to the eastward towards Siberia, and 
that the sea may grow shallow again the 
other side of this comparatively narrow 



THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 101 

depression, thus rendering possible the 
existence of land about the Pole. 

It has seemed to me, however, that 
the form of the polar basin and its broad 
connection with the Atlantic, as well 
as the general slope of the continental 
masses about it, naturally indicated that 
its greatest depth would be somewhere 
near its centre. The gentle inclination 
towards the north of British America and 
of Siberia would naturally continue for a 
long distance under the polar sea, as the 
soundings show. De Long found only 
a few hundred feet of water the whole 
length of his drift from Wrangell Land to 
the New Siberian Islands; Berry found 
about 500 feet at his farthest, north of 
Bering Strait ; but the sea deepens rap- 
idly north of Point Barrow and towards 
the mouth of the Mackenzie, soundings 
of 800 feet and over having been taken 
all along within 100 miles of that coast. 



102 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 

Scientific opinion now favors the theory 
of the general geological permanency of 
continental masses and of oceanic basins ; 
that when the planet first cooled, there 
were large areas of depression and of ele- 
vation, such as we now see on the moon ; 
and although the continental masses and 
the comparatively shallow surrounding 
seas, and the ocean floors as well, have 
had intermittent periods of local eleva- 
tion and depression, that nevertheless the 
earth has on the whole, in a broad and 
general way, maintained its original form, 
and the great oceanic hollows have al- 
ways remained; the decadent continents 
always encroaching upon the sea around 
their borders, but never trespassing very 
seriously on the distant ocean depths. 

So when Nansen finds the shallow Si- 
berian sea rapidly changing to a fathom- 
less ocean — and is obliged to improvise 
a new sounding apparatus — at a point 



THE NOKTH POLAR BASIN 103 

about 400 miles north of the Siberian 
coast, it is like Prince Kropotkin, on his 
way home from Boston, sailing off from 
the shallow seas over the submarine mo- 
raines left by the inland ice of the gla- 
cial period — George's Bank, Stellwagen's 
Bank, the Grand Banks — and across the 
3000 fathoms line of the Atlantic. 

As the Asiatic continental mass ends 
some 300 miles off the north coast, anal- 
ogy would indicate a similar result on the 
other side of the " Arctic gulf," all the 
conditions being similar, and thus we 
should find a deep ocean, and no more 
islands, at an equal distance north of the 
Parry Islands and before getting halfway 
to the Pole, a third part of the way north 
of Point Barrow. 

But if the Pole is somewhere near the 
centre of an ancient and permanent oce- 
anic depression, no land would be likely 
to exist there. If the region were vol- 



104 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 

canic, there might be volcanic islands, 
as in the South Seas. The neighboring 
lands, however, as far as we know them, 
are not volcanic; at least there are no 
active volcanoes nearer than Iceland. 

Yet the theory I have held for many- 
years as to the depth of the polar sea 
and as to the absence of land there was 
largely based upon the Arctic ice condi- 
tions, upon the character of the ice in 
the current west of Spitzbergen, upon the 
very existence of such a current, and upon 
the fact that it has no polar icebergs. 

If the extensive polar basin is mostly of 
oceanic depth, there must be an oceanic 
circulation, as is indicated by Nansen's 
deep-sea temperatures, and much Gulf 
Stream water must pass into it, partly 
perhaps between some easterly extension 
of the Franz Josef group — far beyond 
Payer's discoveries — and Cape Chelyus- 
kin; but probably most of the Atlantic 



THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 105 

water goes up along the west side of Spitz- 
bergen and spreads out over the bottom 
of the polar basin as an under-current. 
The discharge of the Siberian and Ameri- 
can rivers is an important element in the 
matter of Arctic currents, and cannot be 
neglected, but is entirely inadequate to 
account for the immense body of water 
that flows out of the Arctic seas. 

Sir Clements Markham said last No- 
vember : — 

" Personally, as I do not believe in any 
land near the Pole, or on this side of it 
beyond Franz Josef Land, I trust an at- 
tempt hereafter will be made to explore 
another portion of the Arctic regions. I 
believe there is land, probably in the form 
of large islands, between Prince Patrick 
Land and the New Siberia Islands." 

That is a broad gap to fill. I do not 
believe in much land north of Bering 
Strait, for the ice drifts away freely far 



106 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 

to the north in prolonged southerly gales, 
and analogy would suggest the prolonga- 
tion of the Atlantic basin towards the 
Pacific at Bering Strait, and the deep 
water north of Point Barrow points in 
the same direction. But in these previous 
papers I have repeatedly suggested suffi- 
cient reasons for expecting to find more 
or less land north of America. 

Therefore I think favorably of the pro- 
ject of exploration to the north, westward 
from Jones' Sound. 

The nearest continental extension to- 
wards the Pole, as far as appears, is at 
the north end of Greenland ; but Admiral 
Markham found the sea grow deeper as 
he went north over the floe-ice, and Nares 
reported to Disraeli that the Pole was 
impracticable from that base of attack. 
I think that Greely would agree with 
Nares, although very likely there are still 
other islands beyond Cape Washington. 



THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 107 

Nansen tried for the Pole, of course, 
and got halfway to it, setting a mark, in 
something less than a century since Parry's 
farthest, that it may take another century 
to surpass. He went three and one half 
degrees further north than Parry, two 
and five sixths degrees further north than 
Markham and Lockwood, and got within 
three and three fourths degrees, or within 
226 geographical miles, of the Pole, — al- 
most as near to it as from New York to 
"Washington. If we accept Kropotkin's 
dictum, however, that there is a region of 
some 1400 miles by 1000 that we know 
less about than any such extensive region 
on the planet Mars, then adventurous 
men will try to get there, and nothing 
can prevent them. There seems to be 
something magnetic about the North Pole 
— an idea, cultivated by a century of he- 
roic endeavor, that even drove a romantic 
world-ruler like Disraeli to give formal 



108 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 

instructions to a naval officer to go and 
hoist the British flag upon it. If men 
must try for it again, the only way to get 
there, previous to the invention of a prac- 
ticable flying-machine, is to drift there in 
an Arctic ship like the Pram, As for 
Mr. Andree, he should make a few trial 
thirty-day balloon voyages about the cen- 
tre of some large inhabited continent, be- 
fore trying his first great experiment in 
such an unfavorable locality as Spitz- 
bergen. 

Nansen was frozen in some 260 miles 
west of where the Jeannette was crushed, 
although nearly 100 miles further to the 
north (still he was then to some slight 
extent under the lee of the northern ex- 
tension — that De Long had discovered 
— of the New Siberian group), and the 
Jeannette, even if she had not sunk, 
might not have drifted north of the point 
where the Fram was beset. But if Nan- 



THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 109 

sen could have attained a point two or 
three hundred miles to the northeast of 
the place where the Fram was beset, or 
could have crossed through the ice-cur- 
rent to a point " as far northeast as pos- 
sible of Bennett Island," he would prob- 
ably have had a better chance of drift- 
ing across the Pole. It might be found 
impracticable to go up the east side of 
the New Siberian Islands, the eastern 
coasts of which group are probably always 
blocked by the ice-stream driving against 
them from the eastward ; but as these 
islands stand in the way of the ice-cur- 
rent, the seas in their lee are left open 
after the ice of the previous winter is 
out of the way ; and Nansen may know, 
or may not know, whether he could have 
got further to the northeast across the 
current if he had been on hand earlier in 
the season to try the ice everywhere in 
that direction. Indeed, from De Long's 



110 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 

experience it seems hardly probable that 
Nansen could have crossed the stream of 
heavy floe-ice, after passing to the west 
of Bennett Island, that De Long's party 
traveled over on their retreat; for al- 
though Sverdrup worked the Fram across 
the current through the pack for 180 
miles above Spitzbergen, this feat was 
possible only because the pack begins to 
open up and spread out in that vicinity. 

Nansen's voyage might be repeated 
several times without any nearer approach 
to the Pole. 

Captain Berry had a more open sea- 
son in 1881 than De Long in 1879, and 
reached a position 150 miles north and 
east of where the Jeannette was frozen 
in ; and it is very likely that, being fur- 
ther away from continental influences 
and further away from "Wrangell Land, 
a ship might drift nearer the Pole, start- 
ing from Berry's farthest point, than the 



THE NOETH POLAR BASIN 111 

Jeannette would have drifted; still, as 
far as we can judge it would take five 
or six years to get across, and it would 
be mostly luck whether the ship drifted 
across the Pole or passed by at some dis- 
tance on either side. 

But there is no longer any pressing 
need of going to the North Pole, for Nan- 
sen has probably discovered about all 
there is to be discovered in that part of 
the Arctic. The result of any further 
attempt, very likely, would not justify 
the expense and probable waste of human 
life and energy; for all the salient fea- 
tures of the north polar basin are now 
known, and Nansen has just given us the 
key to the whole Arctic mystery, — just 
as when Stanley arrived at the mouth of 
the Congo there was nothing left to do 
in the exploration of Africa but detail 
work. 

March 13, 1897. 



NANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 1 

Nansen's scheme, his ship, his drift, as 
well as his sledge-journey over the mov- 
ing ice, are each and all perfectly unique 
in Arctic annals, — a new departure in 
polar exploration; and each and all are 
so supremely successful that others may 
rush iu, with a light heart, to follow in 
his footsteps, expecting that on a second 
trial they might drift nearer the Pole, or 
another dash might be made for the Pole 
with dog-sledges. 

It is very doubtful whether a better 
start could be made from the New Sibe- 
rian Islands. The Fram was frozen in, 
September 25th, at the edge of the pack 

1 Since sending the preceding paper to the printer, 
Nansen's hook, Farthest North, has heen issued. 



NANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 113 

at the most northerly point of the open 
water, about 280 miles north of the mouth 
of the Lena; and after drifting north- 
westerly a few days over a sea that was 
nearly a mile in depth, the ship then 
floated southeasterly, in about five weeks, 
over 100 miles to a position 100 miles 
west of Bennett Island. But the sea had 
been growing shallow for the last fort- 
night, until on November 9th the depth 
was only fifty-seven feet, which indicates 
a very near approach to the New Sibe- 
rian archipelago. Thence the drift was 
almost directly north for the next 100 
miles, into water over two miles deep. 
Dr. Nansen does not express any opinion 
as to whether a better position could be 
reached for entering the pack, as he was 
too late in the season to do much explor- 
ing, but I think he would agree with me 
that the chances are against a fairer start ; 
and besides, another time he might get 



114 nansen's "farthest north" 

frozen in earlier in the season and much 
farther south, just as the Jeannette was 
frozen in three weeks earlier than the 
Fram, and very far south of the latitude 
attained by Berry, in Bering Sea. 

A ship starting from the same region 
would be likely to drift over much the 
same course, with no more chance of 
veering to the north than to the south of 
the track of the Fram ; and as to the 
dash to the Pole, Nansen thought if he 
had had the dogs from the Olenek he 
could have got much farther, but it seems 
quite evident that if he had got very 
much farther he would have fared far 
worse, for the polar pack is better travel- 
ing in March and April than in the sum- 
mer months. Besides, a man should have 
Nansen's experience, and in fact be Nan- 
sen, to dare such things ; and although 
he only beat the Fram eighteen miles in 
the race for the Pole, still I am glad 



NANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 115 

that Nansen made the venture. That 
plan of spending the winter at Franz 
Josef Land with nothing but cartridges 
was sublime ; but I hope nobody else will 
try it and arrive too late in the season. 

This trip to the Pole over the ice is 
very enticing. Dr. Pavy wanted to try it 
(over again) from Cape Joseph Henry, 
Peary from Greenland. No one will start 
from Franz Josef Land, because the drift 
will be against him, but others may try 
it from some later-to-be-discovered lands 
north of the Parry Islands. I don't be- 
lieve Esquimaux could do it with dogs, — 
I don't believe polar bears could do it ; 
for game is scarce inside the eighty-sixth 
degree, probably even in summer, 1 — not 
to mention obstacles like pressure-ridges, 
" rubble-ice," and open lanes of water. 

1 The bears must live on seals, and seals must live 
on fish, and there are no fish in deep oceans so far 
from land, — certainly none in such an ocean. 



116 nansen's "fakthest north" 

The Fram is a grand ship for the pur- 
pose for which she was built, — to drift 
beset in the polar pack ; and in that un- 
precedented three years' drift she endured 
every kind and degree of pressure that 
such ice as she encountered could exert. 
Yet it is by no means certain — in fact 
it is quite improbable — that the Fram 
could withstand the pressure of the paleo- 
crystic ice, or even of the heavy pack-ice, 
twenty feet thick on the average, that 
Berry found north of Bering Sea. 

The Fram was lying in open water, 
moored to a floe, when frozen in, and 
surrounded by a few large floes of " toler- 
ably thick ice," as Nansen describes it. 
This ice had probably formed on the sea, 
one hundred to two hundred miles to the 
southward, the preceding winter, and had 
drifted north. So the ship remained, 
during her whole drift, in the midst of a 
very extensive field of new ice mixed with 



HANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 117 

year-old ice, which had grown to be three 
and four years old before she got free. 
Yet the unbroken floes were only seven 
or eight feet thick, and such was the ice 
that repeatedly over-rode the floe in which 
the Fram was frozen, and that was broken 
up against her side or split against her 
wedge-shaped stern. No one who has 
seen the paleocrystic ice will believe that 
any ship could live in it for long, and a 
ship, once in it, might have to live in it 
for many years. (To be pushed far up 
an inclined plane on the first encounter 
would be her only salvation.) But there 
is no question of anybody voluntarily en- 
tering the paleocrystic ice. Yet Nansen 
speaks in this way of the old ice seen on 
his poleward journey : — 

" Sometimes it happened that we passed 
through places where the ice was 'un- 
usually massive, with high hummocks, so 
that it looked like undulating country 



118 nansen's "farthest north " 

covered with snow.' This was undoubt- 
edly very old ice, which had drifted in the 
polar sea for a long time on its way from 
the Siberian Sea [?] to the east coast of 
Greenland, and which had been subjected 
year after year to severe pressure. High 
hummocks and mounds are thus formed, 
which summer after summer are partially 
melted by the rays of the sun, and again 
in the winters covered with great drifts 
of snow, so that they assume forms which 
resemble ice-hills rather than piles of sea 
ice resulting from upheaval." 1 (This 
was in latitude 85.°) 

When in latitude 86° he writes in his 
diary : " I will go on one day longer, how- 
ever, to see if the ice is really as bad far- 
ther northward as it appears to be from 
the ridge, thirty feet in height, where we 
are encamped. We hardly made four 
miles yesterday. Lanes, ridges, and end- 

1 Vol. ii., pp. 140, 141, Farthest North. 






119 

less rough ice, it looks like an endless 
moraine of ice-blocks ; and this continual 
lifting of the sledges over every irregular- 
ity is enough to tire out giants. Curious, 
this rubble-ice. For the most part it is 
not so very massive, and seems as if it 
had been forced up somewhat recently, 
for it is incompletely covered with thin, 
loose snow, through which one falls sud- 
denly up to one's middle. And thus it 
extends mile after mile northward, while 
every now and then there are old floes, 
with mounds that have been rounded off 
by the action of the sun in the summer, — 
often very massive ice." l 

Again — in contrast to the above — 
on the homeward journey, Nansen says : 
" The ice we are now stopping in seems 
to me to be something like that we had 
around the Fram. We have about got 
down to the region where she is drift- 

1 Vol. ii., pp. 167, 168, Farthest North. 



120 NANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 

ing." 1 He easily recognizes the differ- 
ence. 

Again lie sums up, as follows : " The 
ridges were fairly high in some places, 
and reached a height of twenty-five feet 
or so. I had a good opportunity here 
of observing how they assume forms like 
ice-mountains, 2 with high, straight sides, 
caused by the splitting of old ridges 
transversely in several directions. I have 
often on this journey seen massive high 
hummocks with similar square sides, and 
of great circumference, sometimes quite 
resembling snow-covered islands. They 
are of ' paleocrystic ice,' as good as any 
one can wish." 3 Nansen adds that no 
real icebergs were ever seen by him nor 
by the men on the Fram during this ex- 
pedition — nothing but sea ice. 

1 Vol. ii., p. 179, Farthest North. 

2 Icebergs, of inland fresh-water glacier ice. 

3 Vol. ii., p. 184, Farthest North. 



121 

Yet, in spite of the ice conditions that 
Nansen found the farther he traveled 
north, he suggests a future drifting expe- 
dition " through Bering Strait and thence 
northward." 

No doubt if the season proved favorable 
and if the ship could get as far north as 
Lieutenant Berry did in the Rodgers, — 
one hundred and fifty miles northeasterly 
from where the Jeannette was frozen in, 
— the drift would be across the Pole, or 
very near it. I feel forced to conclude, 
however, from Nansen's description of 
the ice in the region towards the Pole, 
and from the formidable character and 
evident age of the ice towards the Green- 
land side of the current which passes 
Spitzbergen, some 100 miles to the west- 
ward of the line in which the Pram would 
have drifted if she had not got free — 
ice which even a Scoresby could never 
penetrate — that, possibly, it might take 



122 nansen's "farthest north" 

ten years for a ship to drift directly 
across the Pole from north of Bering Sea. 
For, indeed, it is across the Pole prob- 
ably, and between the Pole and Green- 
land, that the paleocrystic ice slowly and 
gradually works out into the East Green- 
land stream, and consequently this drift 
may not be half so rapid as that by the 
route of the Jeannette and the Pram. 

I can hardly believe that any conceiv- 
able vessel could " stand the racket " in 
such heavy ice for that length of time. 1 
Por even the Pram got strained so that 
she leaked badly in three years of ice- 
pressure — not so very much worse than 
that of the middle-pack of Baffin's Bay. 
While, if the ship were crushed halfway 
across, no news of her discoveries could 
ever transpire. 

Dr. Nansen believes in deep water at 

1 See Payer's New Lands within the Arctic Circle, 
and De Long's Voyage of the Jeannette. 



NANSENS " FAETHEST NORTH 123 

the Pole. His drift gives new data in 
favor of that theory, for he says: "For 
various reasons, I am led to believe that 
in a northerly direction also this deep sea 
is of considerable extent. In the first 
place, nothing was observed, either dur- 
ing the drift of the Pram or during our 
sledge expedition to the north, that would 
point to the proximity of any considerable 
expanse of land ; the ice seemed to drift 
unimpeded, particularly in a northerly 
direction. The way in which the drift 
set straight to the north as soon as there 
was a southerly wind was most striking. 
It was with the greatest difficulty that 
the wind could head the drift back to- 
wards the southeast. Had there been 
any considerable expanse of land within 
reasonable distance to the north of us, 
it would have blocked the free movement 
of the ice in that direction. Besides, the 
large quantity of drift-ice, which drifts 



124 HANSEN'S " FAETHEST NORTH " 

southward with great rapidity along the 
east coast of Greenland all the way down 
to Cape Farewell and beyond it, seems 
to point in the same direction. Such ex- 
tensive ice-fields must have a still larger 
breadth of sea to come from than that 
through which we drifted. Had the 
Fram continued her drift, instead of 
breaking loose to the north of Spitzber- 
gen, she would certainly have come 
down along the coast of Greenland ; but 
probably she would not have got close in 
to that coast, but would have had a cer- 
tain quantity of ice between her and it ; 
and that ice must come from a sea lying 
north of our route." 1 

It was unfortunate that Nansen was so 
enamored of the old theory of the shal- 
lowness of the polar basin. He says : " I 
presupposed a shallow polar sea," 2 and 

1 Vol. ii., pp. 707, 708, Farthest North. 

2 Vol. i., p. 368, Farthest North. 



125 

other references could be made. Conse- 
quently he did not provide any deep-sea 
sounding apparatus, when everything else 
was provided. Although enough incom- 
plete soundings were taken to prove the 
oceanic depth of the whole route covered 
by the drift of the Fram, yet no sound- 
ing-line appears ever to have reached the 
bottom from July 22, 1895 (2056 fath- 
oms), to July 8, 1896 (1841 fathoms) in 
a distance of some 500 miles. The im- 
provised apparatus was too clumsy, and 
was always breaking. Yet, after proving 
the theory of the drift, the depth of the 
sea was of the next importance, and a 
continuous and regular line of deep-sea 
soundings all the way, with a correspond- 
ing table of deep-sea temperatures, and of 
specimens of the sea bottom, would have 
been of paramount value for all time. 

Dr. John Murray, of the Challenger, 
would also have wished " to observe the 



126 nansen' s "farthest north" 

temperature of the ocean at all depths and 
seasons of the year;" ... "to sound, 
trawl, and dredge, and study the charac- 
ter and distribution of marine organ- 
isms." 

The Franz Josef Land route to the Pole 
has been the only one left — in the minds 
of the leading Arctic experts — for the 
last sixteen years since the Jeannette 
Expedition. It is scarcely necessary to 
remark that Nansen has left Jackson 
nothing better to do than to direct his 
efforts to the eastward, and there is much 
valuable work yet to be done in that 
direction. 

Jackson's plan for his expedition was 
only in theory when Nansen sailed, be- 
cause that was before Harmsworth came 
forward to provide the ways and means. 
The nearest parallel in Arctic history to 
that romantic and fortunate meeting of 
Nansen with Jackson was when McClure, 



nansen's "farthest north" 127 

at the Bay of Mercy in 1853, who had 
come in from the Pacific and had not 
seen a stranger for three years, saw Lieu- 
tenant Pirn coming alone over the ice — 
"this solitary helper out of the frozen 
deep." Everybody will remember that 
McClure then abandoned the Investiga- 
tor, taking refuge in another of the 
Franklin search ships on the Atlantic 
side, thus completing the Northwest Pas- 
sage on foot. 

March 20, 1897. 



PEARY'S NEW PLAN FOR REACHING 
THE POLE. 

Lieutenant Peary's latest plan is to 
go by ship up Smith's Sound, in the track 
of Hall, Nares, and Greely, and to es- 
tablish a colony of "Arctic Highlanders" 
— men, dogs, women, and children, with 
all their belongings — at the entrance of 
the Sherard Osborn fiord, which is very 
near the north end of the mainland of 
Greenland. Thence, after establishing 
advance stations and depots, he expects 
to follow the coasts and channels of the 
North Greenland archipelago, which by 
many is supposed to extend far towards 
the Pole. 

Although from general considerations 
previously stated, and especially from the 






peary's new plan 129 

meeting of the tides in Kennedy Channel, 
I do not coincide in the belief that the 
Greenland archipelago extends very far 
north, it is at least the nearest of known, 
and probably of unknown lands to the 
Pole, and any plan of Lieutenant Peary's 
must claim our very serious attention. 
His first plan of a cross-country route to 
the Pole over the inland ice, with the aid 
of dogs, was absolutely original, and his 
first great trip was a tremendous success. 
His second trip was elaborately planned, 
and failed in its main objects only from 
circumstances that could hardly have been 
foreseen. Yet on this second trip he had 
many valuable, even though painful ex- 
periences, which will throw a brilliant 
light on the path of future sledge-expe- 
ditions across glaciated continents. For 
as Livingstone pointed the way for Stan- 
ley, and De Long for Nansen, so Peary 
has established the method for exploring 



130 peary's new plan 

the Antarctic Continent and reaching the 
South Pole. 

The navigation of Smith's Sound is 
exceedingly difficult, and annual supply- 
ships cannot be counted upon with such 
certainty as at Franz Josef Land, or at 
South Victoria Land, in the Antarctic. 
The Alert and Discovery made successful 
voyages both ways. So did the Proteus 
on her first trip. The Polaris was beset 
and destroyed on her way back ; the Nep- 
tune could not reach Greely, and the 
Proteus was crushed on her second trip. 

The Esquimaux colony could probably 
subsist by hunting, although not so well 
at Sherard Osborn fiord, and the ship 
might not reach so high a point; but 
Hall's expedition found seals and plenty 
of musk-oxen at Newman Bay, not quite 
so far up, at Thank God Harbor seals, 
even the large phoca barbata, were very 
abundant, and there is every reason to 



peaky's new plan 131 

assume that there are musk-oxen, seals, 
and even occasional bears throughout the 
archipelago, though probably less abun- 
dant towards the extreme northern part. 

The colony at the head of Robeson 
Channel would be the most available 
base from which thoroughly to explore 
and map out the whole North Greenland 
archipelago with all its channels. Then 
Peary might follow the course of the 
migrations of the Esquimaux and of the 
musk-oxen around to the north of the in- 
land ice, through the Peary Channel to 
Independence Bay, and thence down the 
east coast of Greenland to Cape Bis- 
marck, living mostly on the musk-oxen 
that he would be likely to find on the 
way, with an occasional seal or bear. He 
would thus accomplish the plans that he 
was prevented by so many accidents from 
carrying out on his last sledge- journey, 
and complete the exploration of all that 



132 peary's new plan 

North Greenland region, a work in which 
he has already borne so distinguished a 
part. 

Believing, however, in a deep ocean at 
the Pole that must extend very far, on 
the American side, towards Greenland, I 
cannot but feel that the north-polar part 
of Peary's scheme is impracticable. Let 
us suppose that the islands should extend 
to latitude 84°, and that Peary should 
start from that position as well prepared 
as Nansen was when he finally left the 
Pram, with all the dogs his party could 
manage; then he would have 360 geo- 
graphical miles of the polar pack to trav- 
erse, — 720 miles in all, — and he would 
have the current either across his course 
or partially against him from the start, 
and directly against him, undoubtedly, 
before he got halfway to the Pole ; and 
on his way back he would be in imminent 
danger of being drifted out into East 



PEARY'S NEW PLAN 133 

Greenland seas. As to the difficulty of 
traveling over the polar pack, we have 
the testimony of Nansen and of Admiral 
Markham ; and we should remember that 
there would be little or no game to be 
found anywhere near the Pole on those 
deep seas. 

Nansen got north about 130 miles, 
partly across but somewhat with the drift, 
and then went southwesterly some 360 
miles, partly across, indeed, but mostly 
with the drift. This journey lasted 
through a very long Arctic season of 
some five and one half months, and his 
course led him over little such ice as 
Peary would be likely to meet with from 
the start. 

Peary may not find so rapid a current 
in this region north of Greenland as 
Nansen found on the other side of the 
Pole, and the movement of the ice may 
not so seriously affect his journey as the 



134 peahy's new plan 

preceding comparison might suggest. 
There are many indications that the main 
stream of the polar current flows along 
the general course of the drift of the 
Fram, though the Jeannette relics may- 
have been carried over a more northern 
route and at a faster rate, since they were 
borne the same distance in two years as 
the Fram in three. The Jeannette was 
fairly in the current when the articles 
were left upon the floe, but it looks as if 
the Fram lost half a year before she got 
well into the stream. Nansen's drift back 
to the southeast for a hundred miles, after 
the ship was frozen in, points to the ex- 
istence of an oceanic eddy to the west- 
ward of the submarine bank on which 
the New Siberian group of islands stands 
— the Jeannette current passing north- 
westerly through the deep sea to the 
north of the islands. There are similar 
eddies in the Arctic seas — the Kara Sea, 



135 

and the central part of Baffin's Bay, which 
is occupied by the middle-pack. 

Sir Wyville Thompson's theory of a 
current circling about the polar sea — 
passing into it at Nova Zembla and com- 
ing out on the east side of Greenland — 
would necessarily have led to the infer- 
ence that the whole central part of the 
polar area was occupied by a broad eddy ; 
a great Sargasso sea, which instead of 
being covered with floating seaweed, drift- 
wood, and all the derelicts of the Atlantic, 
would have been entirely filled with an- 
cient and massive ice — perhaps a polar 
ice-cap. 

This speculation suggests Melville's 
theory 1 of an " immovable ice-cap, held in 
place by undiscovered islands, occupying 
the space within the eighty-fifth degree of 
latitude." Nansen's discoveries have at 

1 In the Lena Delta, by Chief Engineer George W. 
Melville, U. S. Navy, p. 475. 



136 PEARY S NEW PLAN 

least displaced this theoretical ice-cap, 
and have pushed it farther over towards 
the American side. In that case it might 
not be far across from the last island north 
of Greenland to the edge of the ice-cap, 
an inference which seems to be sustained 
by Melville, as he says on the same page, 
" Having reached the firm ice-cap, which 
covers the earth to the north of 85°, the 
travel will be smooth and easy." 

Although I can find no place in the 
polar basin for either the smooth "im- 
movable ice-cap," or for the rough, broken 
and revolving ice-cap of a deep Sargasso 
sea, yet it seems to me now, that in the 
region west of Grinnell Land and half- 
way between the Parry Islands and the 
Pole the ice may have a very sluggish 
movement, even if there are no islands to 
hold it in place. 

The powerful East Greenland current 
has a general tendency to draw all the 



peary's new plan 137 

surface water, with its icy burden, out 
from the polar sea towards the Atlantic. 
This strong suction exerts its greatest 
force in the direction of the polar current 
along to the northward of the earlier por- 
tion of the course of the Fram, although 
quite in the line, it may be, of Sverdrup's 
drift the latter part of the way. The 
currents flowing through the numerous 
channels that lead to Baffin's Bay, the 
northwest winds that may preponderate, 
and perhaps islands, constantly tend to 
hold down the paleocrystic ice against the 
North American and North Greenland 



Between the respective spheres of in- 
fluence of the great polar stream and of 
the currents leading to Baffin's Bay, there 
may be an area of slow and irregular 
drift in which the ice may have time to 
grow very old. I have written across the 
face of my polar map, from opposite the 



138 peaky's new plan 

mouth of the Mackenzie to a point north- 
west of Grinnell Land and far towards 
the Pole, " The Paleocrystic Sea." 

In consideration of all the foregoing 
reasons, I am not sure that the movement 
of the ice in a southerly and easterly- 
direction would interfere so seriously as 
might be supposed with Peary's projected 
journey, although I still think that the 
rough and broken character of the pack 
would prevent the attainment of the 
North Pole. Peary, like Nansen, would 
know when to turn back, and would in 
this way make a valuable contribution to 
geographical and hydrographical science. 
He might also surpass Nansen's highest 
latitude, and set a new mark to tempt 
the ambition of future explorers. 

April 14, 1897. 



THE ANTARCTIC 

In the Antarctic, there is everything to 
be done. Yet I have little to add to my 
"The North Pole and the South Pole" 
paper on this subject, except that steam- 
ers have been down there since 1890, and 
Borchegrevink has found not only a place 
to land, but even a very suitable place for 
a station, at Cape Adair, an especially 
convenient headquarters for work at the 
south magnetic pole — perhaps the most 
pressing and timely work to be done in 
the Antarctic, — but too far away and 
badly situated for an attack on the South 
Pole. 

Admiral Nares prefers WeddelTs route, 
and Dr. John Murray theorizes that the 
nearest coast to the South Pole would be 



140 THE ANTARCTIC 

directly south of the farthest point at- 
tained by Weddell in 1823, southeastward 
from Cape Horn and east of Graham's 
Land. Weddell sailed to 75° S., and 
Captain Larsen and other sealers have re- 
cently steamed down the east coast of 
Graham's Land and found a loose pack 
and much open water. 

Indeed, it is probable that Ross and 
Weddell, so long ago, found the two deep- 
est indentations in the Antarctic land and 
the two best routes for a near approach 
to the Southern Pole. For it seems quite 
certain that the warm tropical current 
that flows south along the east coast of 
South America must sink beneath the cold 
Cape Horn current and have an influence 
towards keeping the water open east of 
Graham's Land. The prevailing westerly 
winds, too, may blow the ice away from 
Graham's Land and loosen up the pack. 

The Australian current and the pre- 



THE ANTARCTIC 141 

vailing winds may have a similar influ- 
ence east of Victoria Land, where Sir 
James Ross reached 78° S. and explored 
the whole coast in two successive voyages. 
Captain Kristensen had little difficulty in 
following Ross's course in 1894-95, reach- 
ing 74° S., and could easily have gone 
farther. No one had undertaken this 
voyage since Ross in 1841 and 1842, and 
Kristensen with his small sealing steamer 
Antarctic has shown how superior steam- 
ers are to sailing vessels for such work. 

Dr. Murray suggests that a proper sta- 
tion could probably be found at Mac- 
murdo Bay, near Mt. Erebus, and such a 
base would be very desirable for the ex- 
ploration of the inland ice, for Ross's icy 
barrier, a broad, smooth glacier, level and 
free from crevasses, would afford good op- 
portunity for sledge traveling, besides be- 
ing the nearest known coast to the South 
Pole, the shortest distance. It extends 



142 THE ANTARCTIC 

so far inland towards the south that no 
land, no mountains, no high inland-ice 
horizon can be seen behind it (Ben Nevis 
could not have been seen from Geikie's 
ice-cliff), and it would probably take a 
man a long way towards the Pole before 
reaching any high altitude. It would be 
only some seven hundred miles to the 
Pole, about the distance Peary went over 
the inland ice to the northeasterly end of 
Greenland at Independence Bay. 

The success of Peary's journeys, how- 
ever, depended upon the use of Esqui- 
maux dogs; and whether Arctic dogs 
would live to be carried across the equa- 
tor on shipboard is not known. If a few 
out of many should live, large numbers 
could be bred from such a stock on some 
Antarctic island. 

But even Peary's dogs froze to death 
on his second journey across the inland 
ice of Northern Greenland, and the bliz- 



THE ANTARCTIC 143 

zards would be still worse, perhaps, on 
the probably high glaciated continent of 
the Antarctic, which is supposed to be 
still colder than the Arctic. 

Then Peary, at the end of his terri- 
ble journey to Independence Bay, found 
the musk-ox, and on both trips men and 
dogs took a vacation and recuperated, get- 
ting new life and strength for dogs and 
men — as dogs on such a trip are equal 
to men, and more useful than men; for 
when they break down there is no moral 
objection to their being killed and eaten 
by the men or by the other dogs, which 
is quite as advantageous. 

As far as I can learn, Peary would 
never have been able to get back across 
the inland ice if he had not had the good 
fortune to lay in a new stock of energy 
for men and dogs in the shape of musk- 
ox meat. 1 

1 See Appendix, The East Greenland Musk-Ox. 



144 THE ANTARCTIC 

Dogs had never been used on inland 
ice when I wrote my " Overland " paper 
in 1889, and I remember figuring out an 
elaborate plan of a grand campaign on 
the Franklin-search system of support- 
ing man-sledges, to establish a scientific 
station at the South Pole, — an ambi- 
tious project, and perhaps impracticable. 
It is evident that Peary's remarkably 
successful work in Greenland must be the 
basis for similar undertakings in the ex- 
ploration of the Antarctic Continent, and 
the plan of his last journey, improved 
and corrected from his experience, must 
be used in any serious attempt to get to 
the South Pole. 

Peary's advanced depot, upon which 
the success of his whole trip depended, 
was drifted over and rendered unfindable ; 
and it is plain that the future explorer 
of inland ice will have to flag his whole 
course as far as stations are established 



THE ANTARCTIC 145 

and depots are laid down, just as the 
teamsters bush their roads across the 
northern lakes. A line of large bamboo 
poles could perhaps be deeply and firmly 
set, with small and durable flags or alumi- 
num vanes at the top. Very likely many 
of them would be buried in the snow- 
drifts, and some might be blown down 
or broken off, but not all of them, and 
such a line could be followed if the poles 
were not set too far apart. 

Then with a considerable force of men 
to lay out the preliminary stations and 
depots, and with great packs of dogs — 
that it would take years to breed — and 
a system of supporting sledges, the final 
party of a few men with many dogs could 
be sent off to complete the journey to the 
Pole. 

But it would be a mistake to start too 
early in the spring, for the blizzards in 
which many of the dogs would freeze to 



146 THE ANTARCTIC 

death would be less likely to occur later 
in the season. I fear there will have to 
be much painful experience before the 
South Pole is attained. Still, it is pos- 
sible of attainment, which can hardly be 
said with certainty of the North Pole, 
even though Nansen got so near it, and 
has shown us the only way to get there, 
with his drifting ship and his original 
system of traveling over the polar pack 
with dogs and kayak-sledges. 

March 13, 1897. 

1 For a full understanding of the whole Antarctic 
question, see Dr. John Murray's remarkable paper 
(and map), " The Renewal of Antarctic Exploration," 
in The Geographical Journal (Royal Geographical So- 
ciety) of January, 1894, with the " discussion " follow- 
ing the reading of the paper. 



APPENDIX 



21 Eccleston Square, S. W., London, 
18 December, 1881. 

My dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the 
receipt of your letter, dated November 25th, 
inclosing a paper on Arctic research, and of 
your second letter dated December 1st. I 
have read your paper with much interest, and 
perceive that it is the result of extensive read- 
ing and much thought. It is both gratifying 
and interesting to find that Arctic questions 
are studied with so much care. I therefore 
regret the more that, owing to the author not 
having been personally engaged on Arctic ser- 
vice, it is not considered to be adapted for pub- 
lication in the Proceedings of the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society. 

I agree with you that a search down the 



148 APPENDIX 

Mackenzie would be fruitless. My opinion is 
that De Long shaped a course westward and 
northward, and that if the Jeannette ever 
reached a harbor, it was on an unknown shore 
to the north of Siberia. I saw Mr. Gordon 
Bennett to-day, and he assures me that De 
Long was instructed to endeavor to meet Nor- 
denskjold before proceeding on his own dis- 
coveries. Consequently he must certainly have 
gone westward. 

On the 20th I shall accompany Lord Aber- 
dare, with a Deputation, to urge upon the 
First Lord of the Admiralty the urgent neces- 
sity for sending a steamer to relieve Mr. Leigh 
Smith, and consequently to visit Franz Josef 
Land next season. I trust that we may be 
successful, but it is by no means certain. 

I only wish that we could persuade our 
Government to undertake an adequate ex- 
ploration of Franz Josef Land, and to send 
another steamer to search for the Jeannette. 
But I regret to say that I see very little hope of 
it. My very strong opinion, and in this I con- 
cur with Lieutenant Hovgaard, is that a search 



APPENDIX 149 

ought to be undertaken to Cape Chelyuskin, 
and northwards on or near the meridian of 
that cape. I hope that Hovgaard, who has 
gone to America to collect funds, may be suc- 
cessful, and that if he goes to Cape Chelyuskin, 
Lieutenant Schwatka may accompany him, to 
conduct the sledging work. 

I believe that you are right in supposing 
that the drift along the south shore of Franz 
Josef Land is from east to west ; but there is 
nothing but mere conjecture to indicate the 
direction of currents north of Siberia. . . . 
Ever, yours very truly, 

Clements R. Markham. 

Henry M. Prentiss, Esq., 

Bangor, Maine, United States. 



II 

The Herald, New York, 
November 14, 1883. 

Dear Sir, — We have carefully consid- 
ered your communication, dated November 6. 
While we are nattered by the views you so 
kindly take, we are unable to publish the mat- 
ter. In view of all the facts that have been 
presented concerning the unfortunate expedi- 
tion, we scarcely need explain to you that it 
would be inappropriate for the Herald to pub- 
lish it. Of course, any other journal in the 
country could better afford to do it, in view 
of our relations to the expedition, than the 
Herald. From this you will probably un- 
derstand the feeling which prompts us to re- 
turn you the MS., in case you desire to use it 
elsewhere. 

Remaining very truly yours, 

J. G. Bennett. 

H. M. Prentiss, Esq., 

Bangor, Maine. 



in 

THE EAST GREENLAND MUSK-OX 

Sir Clements Markham, in his The 
Threshold of the Unknown Region, pages 
308-11, says that Clavering in 1823 found 
twelve natives at Cape Borlase Warren, in 
seventy-five degrees north, on the east coast 
of Greenland; but Captain Koldewy did not 
find any Esquimaux about there in 1869, 
though there were abundant traces of them. 
" As the Melville Bay glaciers form an impas- 
sable barrier, preventing the ' Arctic High- 
landers' from wandering southward on the 
west side, so the ice-bound coast on the east 
side would prevent the people seen by Clav- 
ering from taking a southerly course;" and 
again, Markham theorizes, " These considera- 
tions lead to the conclusion that there are, or 
have been, inhabitants in the unexplored region 



152 APPENDIX 

to the north of the known parts of Greenland." 
Yet skeptics may well have thought this utter- 
ance a trifle far-fetched in 1873, before the 
discoveries of Nares and of Greely in Grinnell 
Land. 

But even if Koldewy did not find the men, 
he found whole herds of musk-oxen in the 
same region. Now since Peary has found the 
musk-ox at Independence Bay, and has thus 
established the connecting link in the chain of 
evidence, we find that Markham's theory is 
proven, that the men as well as the musk-oxen 
could and must have come around the north 
end of Greenland from Smith Sound ; the 
course of the previous migration from the 
American continent having been either up 
Smith Sound or by the west coast of Grinnell 
Land, across to Lady Franklin Bay, where 
the musk-ox is abundant, and where there 
are numerous old traces of the Esquimaux, 
and across the sound to Newman Bay, where 
Hall found the musk-ox and killed a great 
many. Thence the Esquimaux as well as the 



APPENDIX 153 

musk-oxen must have passed around the north- 
erly limit of the inland ice of Greenland, ex- 
plored by Peary, to Independence Bay, and 
thence southerly along the east coast of Green- 
land to the region where Clavering and Kol- 
dewey found them. So much for polar theo- 
ries when based on facts and common sense. 
Nansen has just proved another — and the 
most important yet. 






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